In Too Deep
by Two Telescope Eyes
Summary: An underwater arena has the 58th Hunger Games promising to be the most exciting and dangerous games yet. Will it be the games talked about for years to come, or will unexpected trouble cause it to be the games never mentioned? And Tom, a tribute from District 8, must learn the hard way that some things are better left to be forgotten.::Please R&R!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**  
Hello everyone! I am positively thrilled that you have clicked on this story. I love writing for fanfiction and **reviews** mean a lot to me *HINT HINT*.  
I hope you enjoy this rendition of the 58th Hunger Games. Most of the characters are OC, with some oldies here and there, property of our beloved Ms. Collins  
Also, IF you are impatient for the next chapters to come (and I will try to be diligent with updating, I promise), I have a completed story featuring the 61st Hunger Games. I think it might be feeling a bit lonely over there on my profile page. Go check it out!

Annnywhoooooo, Enjoy!

TTE

* * *

~1~

It is hot the night before Reaping Day. The whir of industrial fans and clouds of sticky steam from the dye vats greet me as I return from the night shift soup line, a bowl of lumpy soup in each hand. Feeding the night shift workers is a new thing: an attempt by the Capitol to keep the district happy. District 8, the location of Panem's textile mills and factories and home to some of Panem's most oppressed, has always had a reputation for being a bit unruly.

I don't need the soup. My mother and father are lucky enough to have some of the better paying jobs; designer and overseer respectively. We are some of the small population of the district who can feed ourselves. Most others have to take on factory shifts like their lives depend on it- - -which they often do. I don't need the soup, but Kearsey does.

She is leaning heavily on a conveyor, picking out foreign matter from the spools and spools of yarn rattling by. There are circles under her eyes and her long blond curls are stingy with moisture, but she looks beautiful all the same. She always looks beautiful.

I tell her so when I finally reach her, sliding both bowls of soup in front of her, then resume my post: turning the various yarns in the neighboring vats.

"No, Tom, please eat," she protests halfheartedly, knowing that I wouldn't.

"It's for your brothers," I reply. The dye is hot and has left my skin dyed burgundy to the elbows.

Kearsey's family is one of the less lucky ones. Both her parents work all day in the mills, and Kearsey, the eldest, is needed to work just as hard to feed her three young brothers, who are all not yet old enough to work more than 8 hours a week. As soon as she had turned thirteen, Kearsey began taking on night shifts. And as soon as her brothers each turn thirteen, they would, too.

It was only recently that I had begun to pick up slack for Kearsey and her family. I started working night shifts with her, and handed those extra wages right into her reluctant but grateful hands.

I care for Kearsey more than anyone, and love her family as I do my own. I am more than willing to work late to help her. Who needs sleep, anyway? And tonight especially, with the Reaping so close, what teenager can sleep at all?

I can tell Kearsey is nervous about the reaping. She's no good at hiding her emotions. She's babbling.

"Are you tired yet, Tom?" She asks. "I found this trick that if you puff up your cheeks it helps you stay awake. I showed it to Millie and she looked so funny doing it. People were giving us weird looks. I wonder what they learned in school today. You'll have to show me later, okay? I hope my bothers got to bed on time, they always swear that they do but I don't always believe them. I'd hate for them to be tired tomorrow, but they'll be so glad for some extra soup, won't they...and I can pick up my tesserae..." She drifts off into silence for a moment, then suddenly, she blurts, "What am I going to do if you're picked at the reaping?"

I turn quickly and she's standing there on the verge of tears, her fingers still moving robotically over the spools.

"I won't, and neither will you. Quit worrying." I say firmly but I'm not as certain as I sound.

She's quiet, but I know she's still worrying. We're both thinking about it. Everyone is. After a while she comes over the help me, briefly, with the vats. It is only my first week on the vats. Before, I had been working the conveyors in a different part of the warehouse. But I seem to be doing just fine with the vats. I'm even keeping up with the veterans.

"How do you pick stuff up so fast?" she asks. "You're like this with everything. Like you've been practicing for years."

I shrug.

"Smarty-pants," she teases lightly, and we try to laugh but it feels forced. My eyes itch, but no matter how tired I am, Kearsey is surely more so. I squeeze her hand, burgundy like mine, and she rests her head on my shoulder.

~.~

It's four in the morning when we punch out our time cards and head home. We walk through the heat in the pre-dawn gloom and I hold Kearsey close to me. The upcoming reaping has increased the tension in the narrow, tenement-lined streets. So much so that it can be felt, like electricity, in the air. It's like this every year. Extra peacekeepers are sent in to keep potential riots under control. Worried parents cry out for justice and the lives of their children in the streets. We watch white-uniformed patrols go by. In a nearby ally, someone is shouting. We hear wailing, dogs bark. A grubby old man sleeps slumped on a doorstep, "_Down with the Capitol_" is scrawled on a cardboard box at his feet.

"Oh no, they're going to shoot him for that," Kearsey whispers.

We walk quickly over, and I turn the box to hide the words from view. "At least now they won't kill him in his sleep," I say.

We reach Kearsey's tenement and she embraces me on the doorstep. Her blue eyes shine with the tears she's been holding in all night. We always found it neat that both of our eyes were the same exact shade of blue.

"See you tomorrow," I say, kissing her once.

"Go get some sleep," she replies.

"You, too."

I want to say more, words of comfort, anything. But I know words won't be strong enough to alleviate the terror of the Reaping. It eats away at my insides. The burning possibilities. What if it's Kearsey. What if it's me.

~.~

I'm almost to my own building when a peacekeeper strolls out of an ally in front of me. He's a stranger. A temporary recruit from the Capitol.

"We're you headed, son?" He's big with small, angry eyes. His weapon hangs loosely from his shoulder. I wonder if it's loaded.

"Home, sir. It's right down there," I reply flatly, pointing.

"You working the night shift?" He asks suspiciously.

"Yes, sir."

He steps closer and sniffs, as if he can detect a lie by smelling it.

I hold my ground and stare right into his eyes. It's a challenge, a dare. It's not the first time that I've been stopped at night. Sometimes peacekeepers just check to see that you're not a rabble-rouser. Sometimes they just want a scare. Sometimes a fight.

"What's your name, son?" He asks finally.

"Tom Annic, sir."

"You nineteen yet,Tom?"

"No, sir. Sixteen."

It's the truth, but the peacekeeper snorts in disbelief. But after staring me down for the good part of a minute, he decides to let me go. Although I guess I look old for my age he apparently doesn't see me as a threat. He, after all, is the one with the gun.

"Well, you better get to bed," he orders gruffly. "You've got a big day tomorrow."

I'm relieved to go. I make it to my building in less than a minute, climb the narrow stairs to the third floor. I open the door to our small flat quietly. Both my parents are asleep. I fall into my bed without undressing, exhaustion taking over, and I'm asleep before any harrowing thoughts about the day to come can stop me.


	2. Chapter 2

~2~

I feel as though I have only been asleep for a minute when I wake with a start. My mother sits on my bed. Her graying hair that was once the same sandy-blond as mine is pinned up and she's in her work clothes even though we all have the day off today. A rare treat for a sour occasion.

"I let you sleep in a bit," she says softly. Her fingers play with the pattern on my bedspread. The sight of her all taught and nervous sends a rush of hot dread through my own body, and I lay there a minute, wondering if this will be my last time lying in my own bed. But I soon get up. I have to be strong for my mother, for Kearsey.

My mother drifts towards the kitchen as I dress in a clean button-up shirt, try to tame my curly hair that has a tendency to stick up in weird ways. I watch the boy in the mirror carefully. Does he look scared? Maybe a bit. The summer sun has brought out a lot of my freckles. I have my father's strong cheek-bones, but I didn't look much like him.

The thought turns sour. _Paisley looked like him, _I think.

A couple years ago we lost my little brother in a factory accident. Paisley was ten. There was no question that he was my father's favorite. I, who have always been more like my mother had never really connected with my father. In his opinion, Paisley was the ideal son: the perfect combination of whit, cunning and adoration for my father. I was always too quiet, too absorbed in reading or wandering off on my own, and always too quick to disagree with my father's views of things.

When I walk into the kitchen there is no change in the behavior of my father, who, since the accident, seems to care more about working than he cares about rest of his family. Maybe that's why I spend more and more of my time with Kearsey's family. Her brothers remind me of Paisley.

My parents sit at the plain, district-issued table and eat the plain, district-issued oatmeal. When I take mine, my mother surprises me by sprinkling some of the dark, grainy sugar we had been saving on top of it for me. I thank her, grateful. My father hides behind a book.

My mother tries to make conversation. "I wonder what wild costumes the stylists will come up with this year. It's always so fascinating."

"Yes, fascinating," my father's voice rumbles from behind his book. "Children getting murdered."

"You don't have to be like that," my mother says weakly. "It's just interesting because Tom and I work with this kind of thing. Don't you agree, Tom?"

During the day, when I'm not in school, I'm in the design sector of the District working with my mother. And it is fascinating. Something about the Capitol is intriguing, and if it didn't have to mean the certain death of the Hunger Games, I want a chance to see it for myself one day.

When I agree, however, my father puts his book down.

"I don't understand you," he says, and I know that he knows exactly what I was just thinking. "Neither of you. The Capitol is a place to be abhorred, not admired."

"That's not what we-" I begin but he's not listening.

"They take our children and force us to watch them be killed and they _enjoy_ it. And here you two are prattling along like flaky Capitol citizens wondering what kind of _dressing_ they're going to put on their next _meal."_

My father leaves the table without another word. My mother and I look at each other.

"He just doesn't know how to make the best of a bad situation," she says somewhat tearfully, pushing her oatmeal around with her spoon.

At that moment I know we're both thinking of Paisley. And I want to say something, anything, because it's Reaping Day and I'm scared and all I want is to be a little kid again and curl up in my mother's arms and feel safe.

But I can't.

~.~

The streets are crowded but there is no rioting. Everyone is headed to the town hall. It's noontime and the concrete and tarmac are unforgiving in the heat that radiates from every angle. I'm sweating in a couple minutes, and I push through the crowd as I search for Kearsey.

"Tom! Tom!" I hear a voice and see my friend, Jean, push his way toward me.

"Have you seen Kearsey?" I ask him.

Jean falls into step next to me. He's tall and skinny with dark hair and large calloused hands from working in the mills. He squints in the bright sun.

"No, I haven't," he says, "but I'm sure she's _fine_." He puts extra emphasis on the word _fine. _But it doesn't make me feel much better. I'm just hoping and praying that the heat and the stress hasn't brought on another of her episodes.

"Oh, man," Jean says, shielding his eyes from the blaring sun. "Standing out here is going to be torture."

The town center is, if possible, even hotter. A podium and chairs are set up on the large stone platform at the entrance to the town hall, overlooking the neat rows of ropes sectioning off areas for all the twelve to eighteen-year-olds to stand. Most everyone is already there. I'm searching over the heads of all the assembled girls when I notice Jean giving me a look.

"I'm sure she's here. You can see her after the Reaping." Jean attempts a smile and jokes, "But for goodness sake, it's like you two are sewn together at the hip. What happened to those days when girls were icky and we'd have to hide from them in the dumpsters or else they'd rope us into playing dollies with them?"

I'm tempted to smile but instead I set my jaw and try to focus on something else. Besides, the heat is making everything kind of foggy. I need a clear head.

"We better move before it starts." I say. _I'll just find her after the reaping,_ I tell myself.

We duck under the rope for the sixteen-year-old boys and quickly find some of our classmates.

"Don't look now," Elias tells us in his deep, morose voice, "but Sunshine is trying to burn out all of our eyeballs again this year."

I take my first good look at the stage. It looks like it always does. Our mayor stands off to the side, as boring and gray as usual in her drab pantsuit. Behind her sits one of the three past victors: the only one who ever shows up (the other two are probably too drugged up to be bothered to show). His name is Zeb and he's a big man with a hard face and permanent scowl. His eyes never move from something off in the distance, above everyone's heads. He is as motionless as the stone pillars behind him.

But Zeb's not nearly as eye-catching as the woman who skips up and down the stage in giddy anticipation in front of him. This is Sunshine, District 8's escort for the games, in a tight, startlingly orange dress and spiky yellow hair. In the bright sun, she literally glows to a point where it hurts to look too long. She changes her get-up each year but rarely strays from those colors suiting her namesake. This year her hair sports a large flower to match her dress. She's rather chubby with a baby's face and an enormous tattoo of a sun emerges from the top of the low neck of her dress, taking over her collarbones and most of her shoulders. She is the epitome of Capitol fashion and even in the district which serves as the grounds for all clothes, she could never look more out of place amongst us.

The mayor gravely takes the podium and begins to speak. I've heard all these words before, and my mind soon drifts back to Kearsey. She is hopefully somewhere in the the crowd, waiting in dread and anticipation. I try not to think about the possibility that the next time I'll see her she might be climbing up those stone steps to her death. I try not to think about how her family would suffer without her. How I would...

I try not to think, but I do. The thoughts are toxic and I feel sick. But maybe it's the heat.

I try to focus on the stage again. My stomach drops as I see Sunshine bounce forward to the microphone, and her high, Capitol-accented notes fill the boiling air.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen! I'm glad to see that you've all _sewn_ up!" She giggles at her pun. We all know this routine and we all stay silent. There's a mirage that makes the stage look like water. A young child is crying shrilly somewhere at the edge of the square.

"Now, I know that this year may not be nearly as exciting at last year, our dear Emiline was so close to coming home, wasn't she?" Sunshine says, referring to the last year's games where a girl from the raw fiber's sector came in second to a District 1 career. In general, District 8 often has a disadvantage in the arena because tributes rarely have any experience with woods and nature, wide open spaces and isolation. But in the case of last-years games, however, the arena was a rickety old city, with narrow, suffocating alleys. Almost like home, but a nightmarish version where buildings would collapse without warning and fire was a common threat.

"Well, I'm sure that the fifty-eighth Hunger Games will be a _spool_ of fun all the same," Sunshine continues brightly, "and I just can't wait to see which lucky young persons get to compete this year!" She looks around, unfalteringly beaming. "So I say we get started!"

And her hand like a claw is grabbing at the paper slips in the great glass bowl marked _girls, _and not a soul breathes except that one child who hasn't stopped crying and all I'm thinking is _not Kearsey. Kearsey. Kearsey._

Sunshine reads the name and it's not Kearsey's, and I'm so relieved that I miss the girl tribute's name entirely. Everyone around me sighs collectively. Their sisters, friends, and girlfriends are spared another year.

The girl emerges from the eighteen-year-olds in a heavy, sympathetic quiet. It takes me a minute but I recognize her face from the design sector. Esther Tulley.

I don't remember if I have ever spoken to her. I had gotten the impression that she wasn't an outgoing type. She is tall and skinny with long, lanky arms and legs. She walks up to the stage, shaking, with an awkward gate and shakes Sunshine's hand. She has a small, round face, emphasized by her plain brown bangs. She moves her head and her thin glasses catch the glare from the sun and they flash. She looks positively terrified.

The crowd is silent.

"...Annnnny volunteers for this young lady?" Sunshine recites out of habit. There are none. There never are.

There's a nervous burning starting up in my gut. And again I crane my neck around to try and spot Kearsey in crowd of girls adjacent to us. Out of the corner of my eye I see Sunshine dig around in the second bowl of names. _Here it comes._

The slip of paper flutters in the furnace-like breeze that sweeps across the square and I wish for her to loose the paper to the wind, have it blow away into the smog. But she holds it fast.

And the name she reads is Tom Annic.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Hello! If you are enjoying this story I would love to hear from you in a PM or review! (feedback = happiness)

TTE

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~3~

Maybe it's the heat. I'm not hearing things right. I really should go home and lie down. But I see the faces of Jean and my classmates. They're gaping at me, shocked, horrified. I turn. I can't hear anything but blood pumping in my ears. And a ringing. It's the sound of my name echoing off the close-knit tenements and shops. My name.

I've had this feeling before. When we got the news that my brother had been killed, I couldn't believe it. I walked around the streets like my mind and body were in two separate places. I walked like I was asleep.

I walk like that now. To the stage. Why is it so bright? I feel like I'm being blinded. Sunshine is there, she's smiling with yellow lips and saying something that I don't hear. Then I'm standing next to Esther and I snap into focus.

In the crowd, I spot my parents. It's too far but I think my mother is crying. My father's face is hard. For a moment I imagine we lock eyes but in a moment he turns away.

I scan the mass of heads and, finally, there, a lavender handkerchief neatly tied around blond curls. Kearsey does not look up at the stage. She's staring at her hands that are clutched tight to her chest. I long for her to look up.

There are no volunteers for me. Not that I expected any.

Sunshine directs Esther and I to shake hands. Esther is almost as tall as I am. I clench my fists to keep from trembling but the trembling is all over me. We shake. Esther's hand is clammy. Her eyes are wide and scared but she's otherwise holding it together.

Sunshine plays the anthem.

She sings along shamelessly while the rest of us look on.

~.~

They put me into a room in the town hall. Despite it all, I marvel at the luxurious furniture, carpet, curtains, and how they could exist in the middle of District 8. And the air conditioning. I can't remember the last time I had been cold all summer.

But I soon snap back to reality when the indifferent-looking peacekeepers admit my parents into the room. My mother's face says it all. She's heartbroken. She runs to hug me but can barley get any words out.

I hug her back. Over her shoulder, my father avoids my eyes and stares at the patterned rug. We're like that for a while and no one says a word. When my mother finally lets go, my father says gruffly, "At least now you get your wish. To see the Capitol."

For some reason this really gets to me.

"Not like this," I half-croak. Disappointment burns in me. I had wished, I had hoped that he'd come around for this goodbye which may as well be our last. I think of a hundred things to shout back at him. To hurt him like he's hurting me now with his coldness, now, when all I want is comfort and reassurance from them. It takes a lot of courage to not be afraid of death. I don't think I am quite there yet.

"Now...I'll have lost...both my children," My mother whimpers, smoothing and straightening my shirt impulsively. But I swat her hand away. I swallow back the lump in my throat.

"No, Mom..." But I'm not sure what to say. I'm having a hard time keeping it together.

"I'll never design another outfit, I swear," she continues. "Your father's right, Tom... We should hate the Capitol...taking you away from us like this...and that poor, poor Esther..."

"No, listen to me," I say finally, "I can do this, alright? I'll be okay." Maybe I don't believe half of what I say. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Now they're both looking at me. My mother. My father.

"Just help me okay? Believe in me a little." Maybe I won't even get a chance. Maybe I'll be one of those lost in the bloodbath and forgotten.

My mother smiles sadly. "Of course we will, Tom. We'll always believe in you."

A peacekeeper appears at the door and signals for my parents to leave. And suddenly my father speaks and there's an urgency in his voice I've never heard before, "Tom, we...uh-"

"Let's go," orders the peacekeeper.

"What?" I press desperately. "What? Dad?"

He can't get the words out. He turns away.

"Dad!"

My mother touches my cheek softly, her eyes shimmering with tears. "You're so smart, Tom. So brave."

But I barely pay attention to her, watch instead my father's back as he lurches through the door.

When I'm alone again I feel hollow inside. I am scared. I breathe deeply and blink through my burning eyes to hide it but I'm scared. I numbly stare at the floor and wait for my next visitor, and when she comes through the door I almost lose it again.

"I-I looked for you," I get out. I've never seen Kearsey look the way she does. She's not crying. She seems as numb as I am, feet dragging on the floor.

"I did too," her voice is small and it quivers. Neither of us know what to say. Neither of us are prepared for this.

She finally approaches me and takes my hands. We stand like that, staring into our identical eyes.

"You know," she half-whispers, "I...I think you'll have a shot. It doesn't matter if you've never really experienced...you know...everything, but you're smarter than the rest, I know it. You'll learn it all so fast. And you'll beat them. Everyone."

"You think so?" I say.

"Yes." She grips my hands so tightly, hands both marked by the processing and dyeing sector. Burgundy.

"Kearsey, I-"

"Promise me you won't worry about me," she says. Her voice has gotten stronger. "That's the last thing I want."

"Kearsey-"

"Promise!" She's not crying. She's strong. Stronger than I can imagine.

"I promise," I say at last, but I know it's a lie even before it reaches the chilled air.

"Thank you for everything, Tom," she replies and kisses me.

Everything feels like my last now. Last time I'll be with Kearsey. Last time I'll hold her hand. And I know I should feel more but all I feel is numbness.

"I have something for you...to take with you as your token." Kearsey takes from her pocket a small fabric pouch, presses it into my hand.

"You'll remember what it is...we found it that day we visited the sewing sector."

I do remember. I hold it tight in my hand.

Our time is up.

"I'll see you again." She kisses me one last time and then she's gone.

As I sit alone in the strange room, I pull open the pouch and let the small glass marble fall onto my palm. An earthy green with flecks of gold, once intended to be a bead on some fancy Capitol gown. In my mind's eye I see Kearsey stoop in a semi-darkness and pick it up off of a dusty floor. She holds it to her eye to look though it. It catches a shaft of murky light and it glows, a jewel in the dust and damp.

"You've gone all green, Tom," she giggles, looking around through the glass. The sound of her laughter echos inside of me and I run the back of my hand across my eyes.

~.~

The walk to the train is chaos. Cameras point at me from every direction but I'm ready for them now. When I left the town hall I left all outward signs of weakness along with it. If I even have a chance to come home again, I have to prove myself strong. _Bravery starts now,_ I tell myself. _Strength starts now._ Even if I don't feel that way in reality. It doesn't matter what I feel on the inside. The Capitol viewers don't care about the inside, do they?

Esther lurches along in front of me like some baby animal not yet used to its legs. She keeps her head down. I try to keep mine up.

Sunshine welcomes us onto the train- "Hurry along now darlings, we've got a long trip ahead of us!"- and we're joined by the hulking form of Zeb, who parts the crowd with a silent strength and disappears into the train car without a backwards glance.

Before the doors close, Esther and I are made to stand there a minute, letting the cameras eat up our images, the crowd to call after us. I look up above their heads and see the hazy, sooty rooftops of tenements and warehouses. Perched on one is a large screen. I see myself and Esther. For some reason I expect myself to appear different, but I look just like I did in the mirror this morning. A bit paler now. At least I don't look scared. I am glad of that.

The door slides shut with a snap and the train speeds away in a heartbeat.

I stand in the same spot in a kind of daze, watching the buildings blur and fade and be replaced with patchy woods and fields that I have never seen, until Sunshine pats me on the shoulder.

"Lunch, anyone?" she asks brightly. She looks from me to Esther, whose eyes are glued to the window and her hands in a knot.

"Now, don't look so glum," Sunshine says consolingly. "The food is positively magnificent! And you've each got your own rooms. Why don't you two wash up and I'll meet you in the dining car- we've got a bit of a journey I'm afraid. But we'll arrive at the Capitol first thing in the morning!"

I can tell she's trying to get some sort of response out of us, but Esther is wound up like a spool of tread and I'm starting to feel sick. But it's almost a relief to escape into the solitude of my room, a large, exquisitely furnished room with sizable bathroom and closet. I allow myself the luxury of looking around and testing out the various gadgets, trying to forget myself a little. I open drawers and let my hand brush over the various clothes folded neatly inside. I breath deeply, name the fabrics one by one, r_ayon, cotton, linen, acetate..._ It calms me and I feel better.

I'm ready to face Sunshine and the others again.

~.~

After a quiet lunch of the most luxurious food I've ever seen: pork roast, stews, fragrant loaves of bread shaped like flowers and plates of steaming vegetables, Esther disappears into her room without a word. Zeb, who showed up late and ate with the same imposing silence he had walking through the street, also returnes to his room without a word. Sunshine props herself up on a green velvet couch and turns up the volume on the large television across from it. The recaps of the reaping were in full swing.

Having no desire to sit alone in my room, I decide to join her. As much as I don't want to think about the games, getting a look at my competitors will do nothing but help me. I sit next to Sunshine who makes _oohs_ and _ahhs _as each tribute is picked.

District 1. A large, hulking boy ascends his stage. He's grinning like a champion and shaking his fists in the air. Sunshine commentates excitedly.

"Oooh, I recognize him from Career Watch. His name is Ares, and he can do crazy things with a sword, I can tell you," she says and I'm surprised, not just that she knows who he was but that she is telling me.

"Career Watch?" I ask curiously.

She looks at me in almost equal surprise. "Oh my, you talk! I'm so glad that _one_ of you talks! I've been so bored out of my skin I've had to talk to myself!" She giggles and gives me a radiant smile that stretches her round cheeks unnaturally. "So, don't you get Career Watch at home? No? Well, it's a popular show on the off-season where they film Career children in a few of the districts who spend all year training for the Games. District 1 has a whole gymnasium complex, didn't you know? Strictly speaking, it's not an official Games training center - those aren't allowed - but people go there to workout and things like that. Well, Career Watch gives everyone a nice little sneak peek at who might be chosen or volunteer. It's wonderful! Oh, look, I think I recognize her too..."

I look back at the screen. I see the District 2 girl on a different stage. She's just as vicious-looking as the first with darting, malicious eyes. She's joined in a moment by a boy who runs up to volunteer for a smaller boy, and actually pushes the boy out of the way to reach the mike, speaking his name into it with glee: _Razzle Brannon_.

Despite seeing the same kind of thing play out every year I am still astounded by the difference in attitude between the Career districts and the poor ones like mine. Those poor, bloodthirsty brutes I see appear on stage are nothing but brainwashed. It makes me feel sick and my stomach twist with fear. But Sunshine is unperturbed and rattles on about the Careers and what she remembers about them. I listen intently.

"Now there's a pair!" she says in awe at the tributes from District 4, another set of seemingly perfect killers. "Those two are well rounded, very agile."

"Aren't you not supposed to tell me all of these things?" I ask as an afterthought as the next districts play, no longer careers but scared, innocent children whose future in the Games are treated as more of a death sentence than an honor.

Sunshine waves her hand dismissively. "Well it's only fair that you know! It's always so boring when the Career districts win year end and year out. My favorite games are always the ones when the nobody from District No-One-Knows who turns out to be the best of the best! Like that kid for instance-" she jabs a fat finger at the screen where a twitchy boy with racing eyes takes the stage in District 6- "He could be a total genius!"

And she goes on like that, mindlessly babbling on and, as much as it is my instinct to dislike Sunshine and everything she stands for, I decided that it wouldn't be fair to hate her. She doesn't know any better. None one does. It's like the people of the Capitol are just machinery that does what it's programed to do. And you don't blame machinery when things go wrong. Blame always falls on those who make the machines.

I see myself on the screen walk up the stone steps to the town hall. I am relieved that I only look shocked and not scared. If I'm going to have a shot at surviving the Games, I can't afford to be scared.

_Bravery starts now. Strength starts now._


	4. Chapter 4

~4~

I don't sleep well that night on the train. My dreams are riddled with images of my family, talking to me with voices like echos, Kearsey handing me a small fabric pouch over and over, and worst, faceless shadows stalking me, hunting me, reaching for me with hands like knives. I wake in a sweat. The floor beneath me rumbles with the motion of the train. I see a glimpse of dawn between satin curtains and I am glad that I don't have to force myself to sleep more. Getting up is a relief. I dress in some soft dark shirt made of cotton - _real cotton_ - and pants and tuck the pouch into my pocket. I do not want to forget it.

In the dining car, breakfast is set out in elaborate silver and gold dishes. No district oatmeal here, that is for sure. Esther sits hunched at the end of the table. There is no sign of Sunshine or Zeb.

"They weren't lying about the food, were they?" I say, sitting down, seeing if Esther would respond. "Everyone in the Capitol must be so fat with all this rich food all the time."

No response. She just glances up nervously at me through her bangs and pushes eggs around her plate.

Oh well. I'll have to talk with Sunshine again... I am desperate to avoid thinking about the games. I jump for any distraction so I don't have to think about my impending future, even if it meant putting up with a Capitol flake. Everyone has their own coping method, I guess. That is mine. Esther's is to pretend to be invisible. I wish I could help her, and there is an aching in my chest that won't go away, but I know that there is nothing I can do, for either of us.

Sunshine springs into the room in a vibrant yellow flowered dress. "We," she states excitedly, "are about to arrive! Oh this is absolutely the most exciting part for me! Everyone is going to see you two for real for the fist time!" She plops down in a chair that creaks with the weight of her, starts spooning fresh fruit onto her plate.

Sure enough, I feel the train start to slow. I get up and peer out the window, but it's all of a sudden gone dark. The train's gone into a mountain. After what seems like an eternity, we emerge into sunlight, and - at last - the Capitol rolls into view, a dazzling metropolis of colored buildings and glass. It's breathtaking. But of course, after years of secretly wishing to see it with my own eyes, it is ironic that I see it now, a tribute of the hunger games.

And the people. Sunshine is mellow compared to the ones I see peering in and waving excitedly at the sight of the tribute train. People with dyed skin and hair in all different colors and patterns and shapes. They follow the train doggedly until we disappear into the station and they disappear from view.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" Sunshine coos from the table. "They already love you!"

_Wonderful_ isn't the word I am thinking of but I'm used to her blitheness by now.

"Yes," I reply for her benefit. "Yes, it is."

Sunshine beams.

~.~

Immediately upon arrival, Esther and I are handed over to our prep-teams. Mine consists of two women, both equally bizarre in appearance, both equally delighted to "remake" me. Equestria is small and thin with hair like a long, shiny, navy-colored curtain and she has jewels, _real jewels_, embedded on her cheek bones, accenting her narrow, pointy features. I've never seen anything like it. Eurydice is a stark opposite, tall and curvy with spiked red hair and long red and blue eyelashes that look like they are made of feathers. The two seem so alien it is easy to forget that they are actually people, which makes it easier to accept the fact that they are scrutinizing and embellishing every inch of me, tittering along with their funny accents all the while.

"Well, Equestria, it looks like we've got ourselves another dyer," says Eurydice with seemingly exaggerated exasperation, scrubbing at my burgundy-stained arms with a gritty soap.

"It will come off, no problem," replies Equestria, plucking at hairs around my eyebrows with a languidness that is almost bored.

"I got the impression that dyed skin was quite the fashion statement in the Capitol," I remark innocently, trying to ignore the intermittent jabs of pain.

The pair look at me in surprise and then giggle. It's a strange, tinny sound.

"Unfortunately, Dowlas would never allow it," Eurydice says. "Can you imagine! A purple tribute!" That sets them off again.

Dowlas. It's a name I recognize. He's been a District 8 stylist for a few years now, and found his fame for being quite a child prodigy in his field. As far as I know, he isn't much older than I am. And he is a genius. Despite myself, I feel a small knot of anticipation. I want to meet Dowlas, someone who did a lot of what I did every day back in 8, but very, very well.

When my prep team has finished with me, which felt like hours later, they finally send for him.

Dowlas looks like I remember from the previous years. Tall and thin, with slick black hair to his shoulders. He is, in contrast with the other Capitol people I've seen, completely normal in appearance. No weird colorations. No outlandish clothing. Just a pair of golden eyes that seem wise beyond their years and a kind hand that extends to me.

"It's good to meet you, Tom," he says in a low, deliberate voice. "My name is Dowlas. I am your stylist. Are you interested in some lunch?"

Lunch consists of delicious smelling chicken with herbs in a dark purple gravy. I eat with relish and watch Dowlas carefully. He is quite intriguing. So normal looking. After seeing so many bizarre people, especially those who were old and desperately trying to look young, it is a relief to just sit and talk with someone who was not trying to be who he wasn't. Someone natural. But it isn't long before the conversation turns to work. Dowlas's work. The opening ceremonies, just a few hours away. Dowlas is eager to discuss my costume.

"What I like about District 8," he says coolly, picking apart a roll on his plate, "is that it is very open to design possibilities. It's pretty hard to make a costume that does not represent _textiles _in any way, as you can imagine. You may have seen how my predecessors had a habit of dressing tributes from your district in what looked like an eclectic collection of a child's costume closet," Dowlas gives a somewhat roguish smile, "but I try and make a point that anything I put on a tribute has a desired affect. A costume needs to send the right message, you understand, and I think what I - and my partner Salazara - have designed for you and your fellow tribute, Esther, will be very functional in that way."

_Alright,_ I think, _It's not hard to guess how this kid got this job. I won't question this genius. _It's not like I have a choice, anyway.

A few hours later, I understand what Dowlas meant by the costume sending the right message. I'm in a dark, pinstriped suit that is very old and unfamiliar in style, with a high collar and lengthy tailcoat. Dowlas has fit me with sleek purple gloves, an old-fashioned top hat and - I was taken aback at first - a polished silver cane. I look at myself in the mirror. I look like I've just fallen out of an ancient time only seen in books, before the Dark Days even, when people got their power from outdated things like steam and fire.

"Yep, I think that will do," says Dowlas, adjusting the coloring on my face. He's accented the shadows, bringing them out, making them dark and edgy. I stare at my reflection. I look mysterious. I look cunning. I look downright malevolent. I am amazed.

"You can thank me later, young sir," Dowlas comments with a pointed grin and a bow. Dowlas is indeed a genius. Almost a scary genius. And I am already thankful that he's made me look so threatening. It is invaluable.

"I just wish I had thought of getting you a monocle," Dowlas remarks wistfully.

"A what?"

"Never mind. Let's get down to the stables, I'm sure Salazara's already there with Esther."

We take the elevator down. Unfortunately I feel as though I left most of myself back in the Remake Center. _Am I really here?_ I ask myself. _Am I really about to sit in a chariot in the opening ceremonies? Oh god... _I am starting to feel sick again. _Come on, keep it together...just a little longer..._

"Dowlassss!" A reptilian-looking woman approaches us when we reach the bottom floor and the elevator admits us into a cavernous stables-like room busy with activity. Chariots are already lined up and waiting. Fellow tributes stand all around, many unrecognizable under crazy costumes, many nervously fidgeting and looking around wild-eyed.

"Salazara!" Dowlas replies in greeting. Behind Salazara, Esther stands in an outfit that matches my own, except hers has been transformed into a long dress with leather criss-crossing ties on the front and a broad-rimmed hat with some sort of black netting attached that shades her eyes. Even with her nervous demeanor, the costume makes her look just as dark and mysterious as I did in the mirror. If she only would play it up a little the audience would eat her up and maybe she'd have more of a chance over all.

"I trussssst everything went well?" Salazara says. When she speaks she drags out her s's into a hiss. Like a snake. It's kind of creepy and combined with her weird textured skin and slitted yellow eyes it's no wonder Esther looks so scared. They should have given her the normal stylist. Given me the snake-lady. At least I am in a state where I can handle it.

I stand beside Esther as they prep our chariot, light-wood with some kind of colorful canvas trim and pulled by four horses the color of burlap. Esther is shaking noticeably. I find her purple gloved hand and squeeze it.

"Look, they're already staring," I whisper. "I don't think we have anything to worry about."

She's taken by sunrise and flinches away but I'm right. I've noticed a couple of Careers eying the two of us in our unconventional attire. I catch one in the act, the boy who is dressed like a fish from District 4, and for a few seconds we're staring right at each other and then suddenly the boy's lips twitch into a small, knowing smile.

I look away in an instant. _Ooookay that was creepy... _But there is no doubt that we're getting attention. Dowlas and Salazara have definitely done their job well.

"Okay," Dowlas claps his hands together. "It's time."

We're strapped into the chariot. I'm thankful for the ties for I'd otherwise be worried about the possibility of falling out completely. I'm so caught up in the commotion I almost forget to be nervous. I hear the distant rumbling roar of Capitol citizens outside. _Keep it together..._

"Now remember," Dowlas has to almost shout because they've started playing the noise from outside inside for all to hear, "everyone is going to be sizing you up and deciding what kind of fighter you're going to be. Just let the costume do the work and you'll be fine. But I recommend tying to look mean, or angry or better yet," a sudden spark lights up in his eyes, "look bored. Oh, they'll just eat it up!"

"Good luck to you," hisses Salazara.

Chariots are pulling away in front of us. In a moment our chariot moves and I'm blinded by lights. The noise is defining. You could lose yourself in that noise. _Lose myself? _That doesn't sound like a bad idea. Remember what Dowlas said. What did Dowlas say? Look bored.

I think I can do that.

_~.~_

"_Impresssssssive!"_

"Wow, just...wow!"

Our stylists and prep teams are gushing with praise. I am relieved beyond words even when my heart's still beating a mile a minute and I'm completely drained. Even Esther seems more confident-looking.

It takes a minute for us to get organized after the ceremony, but at long last we're taken up the elevator to the eighth floor, our designated floor, and we're welcomed with a feast at a long, elegant dining table. Sunshine and Zeb are waiting for us. Sunshine babbles as usual and as usual Zeb has nothing to say. But I don't care. I am just glad that I have gotten through the opening ceremonies. For the first time, I had felt really powerful in that chariot, with people screaming - screaming for me, maybe - and I know I should feel worried or scared and I know I will feel that again once the adrenalin wears off but for now, right now, I feel like I can do anything.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **Sorry for the wait on this one. But it's nice and long...enjoy...review...and thank you! (Ooh, rhyming!)

**TTE  
**

* * *

~5~**  
**

"Always assume that you are at a disadvantage."

"Sorry, what?" I blurt, taken aback.

It is breakfast. My first morning in the Capitol. I had gone to my room the night before, fallen into an instant, dreamless sleep and did not wake until Sunshine rapped on my door around eight.

"Always assume that you are at a disadvantage," Zeb repeats, in a voice just a deep and powerful as his physique suggests. He sits up straight in his chair, staring intently at Esther and I. Esther looks nervously at me then back at Zeb, as if unsure if Zeb had really been speaking to us. As far as I can recall, this is the first time he has done so.

"Um... What do you mean, exactly?" I ask. Since Zeb is contractually supposed to be our mentor, I hope that all his advice won't be limited to these cryptic one-liners.

Luckily, the ice seems to have been broken with Zeb. "What I mean," he continues, looking from one of us to the other, "is that most of your opponents are going to know a lot more about fighting and how to survive in an arena than either of you could know." Zeb has a funny way of speaking. Slow, deliberate, like every word is weighted. "Because, of course, you are from District 8." Zeb's eyes are piercing and black.

"I hardly think that is true!" Sunshine protests from across the table. Her giant orange flower is back, perched precariously on her head. "How can you say that? What about Emiline? Last year, she was runner up!"

"Emiline," Zeb says with his slow and deathly cool, glaring at Sunshine, "was lucky. The arena was a city. How many arenas have been cities like that one, Sunshine?"

"Arenas are different every year, Zeb," she retorts.

"Exactly. The arena is likely to be a terrain neither of them have ever seen before."

"But..." I say somewhat tentatively, suddenly worried that saying the wrong thing might set Zeb off, "won't that be the case for a lot of the tributes?"

"Some," replies Zeb, "but there are kids out there who have worked in mining or masonry or lumber and have handled picks or hammers or axes everyday of their lives, know how to use them as a weapon in an instant. And as I have been told, both of you were, until recently, employed in the design sector, with the _scissors and tape measures."_

"May I ask what your point is, Zeb, before you squash the rest of their confidence into the dirt?" Sunshine interrupts, disapproving.

For a few moments there's some sort of silent starting contest between the two. Zeb is unshakable, like a rock wall. Despite the fact that he is my mentor and my life going to depend on his advice very soon, I decide that I don't partially like him. Something about his comment about how District 8 is somehow weaker than the rest, and especially because the words had come from him, a victor.

"My point," Zeb says, looking back at Esther and I and carrying on as if Sunshine had never spoken, "Is that when you two go down for training today, and tomorrow and the day after that, I want you to become as familiar as you possibly can with as many things that you can get your hands on. Do not hold back. _Do not be intimidated_." With that, Zeb pushes his chair away from the table and, leaving his untouched plate of food and the rest of us staring dumbfounded at him, he disappears into his room.

"Pleasant man, isn't he?" sighs Sunshine, pursing her lemon yellow lips.

_~.~_

At ten, Esther and I take the elevator down to the training center. I notice that Esther has stopped trembling and flinching at every sudden movement, but she has started a habit of staring blankly at walls and she never answers questions with more than a shrug. Ideally she'd be someone I could commiserate with. Someone normal from home who knows exactly what I am going through. So I can't help but feel desperately lonely in that elevator. I let the feeling take hold of me for a moment or two, safe in the confines of the elevator. Let it form a hollow pit in my stomach. Then force it away.

_I am strong, I am brave._

But I feel certainly less brave when we walk into the training center. Tributes are arriving in other elevators and gathering around a table, picking up numbers. Now that they are not hidden by costumes, I can see my competitors clearly. The Careers from 1, 2, and 4 are all big and lethal-looking, and as expected they stand together, already forming some sort of allegiance with each other. Only rarely do Career tributes not band together like that. It makes it so much easier for them to track down their prey when in a pack. At least I have Sunshine's ramblings about each tribute from the train ride to help me try and prepare for them. Maybe I am not so disadvantaged as Zeb seems to think. _I_ am still a mystery to the rest of the tributes.

I get an "8" pinned to my back and get a good look around. The center is huge with more stations than I can count. Most of the rest of the tributes wander around like lost sheep, although I notice the two tributes from District 10 look almost as comfortable and confident as the Careers. The girl is large and fit with a round face and red cheeks, she looks around curiously while the boy, who is shorter and stockier, flexes his shoulders every few seconds. Behind them I see the twitchy boy from 6, pacing in circles and wringing his hands. The Careers, who by now have bonded boisterously, point him out and laugh amongst themselves. District 2 boy tastelessly mimics him, rolling his eyes into his head and flailing his arms.

I feel something suddenly burning in me. I loathe bullies. Always have. What is his name? _Razzle. _I got in trouble for hitting boys like Razzle in school when I was little. I was always trying to protect my friends, I guess, but ended up hurting myself most of the time. But I suppose that was what I preferred. Me instead of them. The irony of that now almost makes me smile as, at that moment, the head trainer arrives.

"Just a few rules," she informs us after we have gathered around her. "No fighting, no purposely hurting another tribute, no leaving." She rattles them off in a bored voice, and then she lets us loose.

Despite my dislike for Zeb, I know that his advice has wisdom in it, and immediately, I go to the first station I find, determined to make my rounds with all the stations. The station is knot-tying. I notice the Careers have gone straight for the weapons and do not hesitate to show off their skill. I stare, transfixed for a minute, as the District 4 girl lodges a spear into the chest of a dummy from 30 feet away, while next to her, the District 4 boy strikes another with alarming accuracy.

"Knot-tying is a very useful skill," the trainer informs me enthusiastically from behind the table, drawing my attention back to my task at hand. _Right_. _Not being intimidated._ I sit down.

"Here, try this knot." The trainer takes a short length of rope and demonstrates. She is, apart from the fact that her skin is turquoise, reasonably normal-looking for a Capitol citizen. I watch her carefully, memorize the movement as she twists and turns the rope in her fingers. "It's a bit tricky," she says, "but it's the strongest if you want to suspend yourself from a tree or something." She holds up the completed knot. I take a rope of my own and start twisting.

"Alright, I'll show you the first step," she says brightly, picking up a new piece.

"No, I'm all set, thank you," I say, and show her my own completed knot.

The trainer's eyes widen. "My, you're quick!"

"Would you show me some more?" I ask.

"Y-yes! Of course!"

Her excitement is comforting. Maybe learning all these new things won't be too difficult. Maybe. Maybe I'll actually do alright.

~.~

That night I can't sleep and stay up in the living room alone. Of course it doesn't help that I am exhausted from training all day. There's some sort of fireplace in the spacious, cozy room that has soft orange flames. It reminds me of home, in the winder. They lit fires like that to keep the warehouses warm.

It's late and I'm thinking about home and Kearsey when I hear a soft voice drifting down the hall, quiet, like they don't want to be heard:

_..soft as cotton, sweet as rain_

_I'll sing this song for you again_

It is singing. Melancholy, sweet. I make my way to the hall, following the sound, intrigued.

_...there's nothing here for you to fear_

_lay down your head and sleep_

I reach the hall and almost run headlong into Esther. It's her singing. With a squeak of surprise, she blushes red and lurches into her room without a backward glance.

I stare after her. I didn't know she sang. I recognize the song. Mothers in District 8 would always sing it to lull their children off to sleep at night. For some reason, it brings back the loneliness in me. And a deep sadness over the fact that Esther is as helpless as I am over our impeding fates. No wonder she can't sleep. I just wish she'd speak to me... We are both in this together, and there is only so long I can tolerate Sunshine's mindless tittering.

I go to my room. Lie awake and watch the pattern of the colorful city lights from below dance across the ceiling. My loneliness weighs me down like water.

~.~

Day two of training. I've gotten through most of the basic survival stations and have moved onto weapons. This puts me in close proximity to the Careers, but it is unavoidable.

I try my hand at archery. I don't do very well, but at least the trainer complements my form. I have just set the shining silver bow down, ready to move on, when Esther falls. Falls from halfway up the net obstacle nearby onto the mat in a heap. Right in front of Razzle and the brutish District 1 boy, Ares. Esther is as quiet about it as ever but the Careers are not. They launch into a fit of mirth, and cruelly imitate her.

I go to her without thinking. She's blushed scarlet and looks like she's about to cry, but when I offer her my hand she ignores it, slides off the mat and stumbles away into an unassuming corner of the Center, hiding her face.

Most everyone goes back to training. Everyone except the Careers, and especially Razzle, who can't seem to let it go, commenting loudly to his fellows:

"You see her face? Can't even reach the top-"

I feel the burning inside me again. _No, don't do this_, I tell myself. But I can't just let it happen. In a second I'm in Razzle's face.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" I say through my teeth, slowly, coldly. Everyone is starting. Razzle is taller than me. He looms over me.

"Protecting your _girlfriend_, Eight?" hisses Razzle with a wicked grin.

"Protecting your _ego,_ _Two?" _I say, "because I'm not sure if it fits inside that _thimble you call a brain_."

I know I've gone too far, that I should have stopped while I was ahead. Razzle's eyes gleam with malevolence. His cronies hang back, smirking. Then Razzle lunges at me, swings at me with a club-like arm. My own arms go up automatically, shield my face, and then I aim for his gut. In an instant, however, Capitol attendants flood out of hidden and engulf us, pulling us apart and shouting.

"Fighting is prohibited!" One of them shouts shrilly.

I don't struggle, let them pull me back. All I needed to do was to show Razzle that we weren't all weaklings to be tormented.

"Save it for the Games, son," the man holding me says gruffly. They let us go but stand around until we turn away and the tension fades. It's dead silent in the Training Center. I'm still so pumped full of adrenalin that I haven't had time to even think about how reckless I had been. That isn't like me. The Games are already changing me in more ways than I can imagine.

I mind my own business for the rest of the day. Razzle and the rest pointedly ignore me and pretty much everyone else as they throw weapons around. All except one. The District 4 boy, who, up until this point, I haven't noticed that he is a lot quieter and reserved than the others. Doesn't show off or boast. Yet, I could tell he emanated power, and, despite Razzle's blatancy, appears to be the leader of the group. And he couldn't keep his eyes off me. This is the one in the fish costume, I remind myself, the one who smiled at me. I remember Sunshine saying something about him on the train. Siris, they called him. Compared himself to riptide in one episode, Sunshine had remarked. _You don't always notice him, but he's there and will drown you in an instant. _Lovely.

I try to ignore the staring.

But then again, everyone is staring.

~.~

"That was completely...uncivilized of you!" Sunshine scolds me that evening. But I've had enough of her. With so little time left it is hard to care about things like etiquette.

"Zeb instructed me to not be intimidated by anything," I respond flatly.

"Which is exactly what he did," puts in Zeb. "And exactly what he should do for the Gamemakers' evaluations tomorrow. Show them you're made of tougher stuff than your background suggests."

"But...it's so...unsportsmanlike!" Sunshine is struggling. Zeb is staring her down and she's quaking under his presence.

"_Unsportsmanlike_!" scoffs Zeb.

I leave the two in the living room to their arguing. I have this sickening uneasiness in my gut. I feel short tempered. I feel volatile. I don't like what the Games is doing to me and it hasn't even started. I think I just need some time alone. Some time to calm down.

But I meet Esther in the hallway, but this time she's not singing. And it is clear she was listening in. I begin to walk by, sure she will just be her normal, timid self, despite what I did for her today, but at long, long last, she speaks up.

"Why'd you do it?" She asks. They did something to her eyes in the Remake Center, I realize. She doesn't wear her glasses anymore.

"You fell." I say.

"I could have gotten up on my own just fine."

"They were being cruel to you."

"They are always cruel."

I stare at her. "I was just trying to help you."

"Well, I didn't want it."

I resist the sudden urge to shake her. I've been nothing but kind to her and now, when she suddenly decides that she is capable of speech, the first words our of her mouth are ungrateful.

"Well you could have at least said so!" I exclaim. "Instead of saying _nothing, _you could have said _something! Anything!_ You know I'm going through the same exact thing as you! And since we're both probably going to die in a few days, the least we can do is _help_ each other, and, you know, be _nice_ to one another!"

She looks reproachfully at me. "You're not," she says quietly.

"What?"

"Don't be stupid, Tom." Is she glaring at me? "_You're_ not going to be killed in any bloodbath."

We stand in the hallway staring at each other for what feels like a long time. What is she saying? That I could actually survive? In an instant, I feel badly about my outburst.

"Sorry, I..." I say at last, "I...feel like haven't really been myself lately. I've just...had a bad day..."

"...Me, too."

Ester backtracks down the hall to her room and disappears, leaving me standing alone in the hallway with my growing uneasiness and the sound of her words echoing in my head, long after her door closes behind her


	6. Chapter 6

~6~

The upcoming evaluations are like a dark cloud that hangs over me throughout the next morning. We all scramble to get in those last precious hours of training before we will be assessed by the Gamemakers that afternoon. I channel my anxiety into perfecting all the new skills I've picked up. I throw some knives, construct a blind, manage to unbalance a Capitol sparing partner in the hand-to-hand combat station. I plow through as much as I can, leaving no chance for my mind to wander.

Esther has gone back to silence once more. I try to not let it bother me. I am here to train, nothing more. I am determined to survive the arena as long as I can. Show all of Panem that even clothing designers from District 8 can always stand a fighting chance...

Purple-clad Gamemakers sit in on our training sessions. I'm not sure if I remember them being in the Center during my face-off with Razzle, but I certainly notice them watching me just as much as they watch the Careers.

Lunch comes and goes, and all twenty-four of us wait in the dinning hall for a little old Gamemaker, who sports fluffy pink hair the consistency of raw cotton, to arrive and announce:

"Your private evaluations will commence shortly. You will stay where you are until you are called in by district. When you are dismissed from the gymnasium you may return to your district floor and wait for the results broadcast. Good luck to you all."

Then tributes start disappearing. One by one. First the boy tribute, then the girl. I start to feel sick again but there is nothing for me to occupy myself with now. I just breathe deeply and think about what Zeb had told Esther and I over breakfast:

"Do not hesitate to show them everything you got. _Everything. _The Gamemakers hold your life in their hands. A high score means sponsors. Sponsors can be the difference between life and death in the arena."

The District 7 boy, a trembling fourteen-year-old, stumbles up when he's called. Then the girl.

Then they call me. I stand. _Okay. Do not be intimidated. I am strong. I am brave. _The words have become my mantra over the past few days. I say them over and over, like I'm trying to constantly convince myself of their validity.

I walk into the gymnasium.

The Gamemakers stand around, eating from a buffet and watch me somewhat glassy-eyed, or bored.

"District Eight. Tom Annic," I say in what I hope is a strong and steady voice. The Head Gamemaker nods to me, expectant.

What I realized during training was that I am not exceptional in most of the stations, but tend to be sufficient. What I hope will impress the Gamemakers, therefore, will be my versatility. My knack for picking things up quickly.

So I move though the now empty stations with precision. I climb obstacles. I paint camouflage, tie knots. I throw a spear that lands somewhat off target. The Gamemakers, who, up until that point, have been regarding me with interest, look back at each other, unsure. But then I pick up a knife, then a mace, then a bow, all with similar outcomes, and see a few make notes, look to each other, look to me, intrigued. I wonder if they saw my face-off. I find myself suddenly hoping that they did.

After twenty-or-so minutes, I am dismissed. I am sweaty, dirty with the earth-based paints, exhausted, but relieved beyond measure that it is over. I don't see Esther or am able to wish her luck.

I ride the elevator alone, the blinking of the floor numbers like a countdown.

~.~

Sunshine springs into the room. "It's on it's on!" she cries, plopping herself down on one of the silken couches as the large T.V. screen lights up in the corner. We all gather around, apprehensive. After the Capitol anthem, tributes pictures begin to flash on the screen, followed by their score. A number ranked from 1 through 12. As expected, the Careers get higher scores. Right from the top, District 1's Ares scores a ten. The girl, a nine. Razzle, a nine. The District 2 girl, Blythe, a nine. And it goes on. Flashing without pause or sympathy. District 3 scores a three and four respectively. District 4 - Siris's picture flashes across the screen followed by _eleven._ The girl, Delta, a ten. I hear Sunshine suck in a breath.

"Tough competition this year," she says in an undertone.

The boy form 6 with the tics scores an impressive seven. My heart begins to race. I don't have time to mentally prepare for what's to come. District 7 comes and goes with a pair of fours.

I expect a five or a six if I am lucky. An average score is always helpful for a tribute to blend in and go unnoticed by the Career tributes who will be doing their best to knock our their best competitors. But when my face flashes across the screen my score is not a five or a six, or even a seven.

It's a nine.

Well, they're not going to be ignoring me now.

~.~

That night, after sitting in my room alone, perseverating for a couple hours about the interviews that would take place the following evening, I wander into the living room. I sit there alone, watching the fire for a few minutes before I notice the sound of voices coming from the large, open dining room. I listen carefully, and recognize Zeb's deep tones:

"...I understand that it's hard, but everything you do now is going to have an affect in the arena...You really need to step it up in your interview..."

I hear in his voice a softness that was never there before. Is he talking to Esther? She's been even more reserved since earlier, when she found out that she had gotten a three in training.

I walk over until I can see them: Esther sitting at the table, Zeb standing up across from her. Zeb hasn't said anything to me yet about my interview. I really should ask him.

"Are you hearing what I'm saying?" Zeb continues in that soft but serious tone. "The Capitol won't look twice at you unless you give them something to remember you by. That means perking up. Engaging." Zeb looks up and sees me.

"Why don't you join us," He says flatly, without a pause.

I do. Esther hides behind her bangs, hunched over the table.

"We were just discussing interview strategies," says Zeb.

"I heard," I say.

"I see. Well, the case is obviously different for you," he says to me. "Tomorrow you just need to be yourself. They've got their eyes on you already." He looks at Esther. And in a moment the softness in his voice is gone and he's back to his blatant self. "But Miss-hide-behind-her-hair over here could use some confidence lessons."

Esther makes a noise. She bolts up from her chair and flees the room, her arms hiding her face. I stare after her, then push up from my chair and turn on Zeb.

"Why'd you have to do that? All she needs is a little encouragement!"

Zeb's voice booms back, "Timidity does not win the Hunger Games Tom I expected you of all people to know that!"

"But we can't all _win_! She's just scared that she's going to be killed. We're all scared! I expected _you_ of all people to know that, Zeb!" I shoot back. My hands shake. This anger isn't like me. It scares me.

Zeb is terrifying, his voice low and controlled and full of power. "_I_ did not win the forty-seventh Hunger Games because I was _scared_. I did not _kill_ my _peers_ out of _fear_. I killed out of _necessity_ because I wanted to _survive_. There is no room for fear. You let fear get to you in the arena and you're dead. That's it."

We glare at one another. The overwhelming feeling of anger and helplessness threatens to take over me. I really need to escape to my room, hide, like Esther. But I can't back down to Zeb now, not when hatred for the man swirls in my gut, not when, deep down, I know that he's right.

"People like Esther aren't meant to win the Hunger Games," Zeb says with finality.

"And what about people like me," I say through my teeth.

"People like _us-"_

"-I am not like you," I cut in vehemently.

Zeb continues, unfazed, "-_like us _are survivors_."_

~.~

The afternoon of the interviews, the prep teams meet us on our floor, and I obligingly give myself over to their perfectionist's fingers. Dowlas comes into my room after an hour or two, with a suit hanger under his arm.

"He's all ready!" pipes Eurydice, fluttering her enormous eyelashes.

"Good, good. You may leave now," Dowlas says, and the two women oblige.

"How are you feeling?" Dowlas asks me, coming around to face me.

"Alright," I say.

"You don't have to worry about what to say at the interviews, Tom," he says reassuringly. "Our lovely Caesar Flickerman will do all the work for you."

"He's the new host?" I ask. The name rings a bell. "No more Rogwell Temple, then?"

Dowlas smiles. "No, I'm afraid Mr. Temple's memory was slipping just a bit too far. But this new guy is just perfect, you'll see."

Dowlas proceeds to dress me up. It's an ordinary-looking suit at first glance, but it's made out of a strange material. Perfectly fit, black, glossy, reflective to the point that it looks almost like I am in a suit of metal, but the fabric is soft to the touch. And plated. Each part reflecting a soft, dull version of the original light. In the mirror, I look almost like I'm wearing the lights of my district's factories, which remain on all night, seen through the clouds of hazy smog that is always prevalent through the summer.

"Wow," I say.

Dowlas cracks the self-satisfied smile of a genius. "Yes, yes. The result is quiet spectacular. I believe you'll be a big hit with the audience." He runs a hand through the long strands of his black hair, scrutinizing me.

"You know," he says, taping his nose with a long finger. "I'm going to share a bit of stylist wisdom with you, Tom. I've always been of the opinion that the most powerful weapon you'll find in the arena is not the longest sword or the sharpest arrow, but the audience. Yes," he says in reply to my confused look. "The audience. You'd be amazed at the lengths the Gamemakers will go to to please their audience. To keep them happy." Dowlas walks around me once more in silence. "I recommend you keep that in mind."

Then he straightens some seam in the back of the suit and gives me a push on the shoulders. "Alright. Go get 'em!"

And I stumble forward, mind reeling.

~.~

Caesar Flickerman is _not _the weirdest looking Capitol citizen I have seen, and that is certainly saying something. The young man is all purple. Purple hair, purple suit, purple lips. His smile is enormous, his laugh is infectious and the crowd is loving him.

All twenty-four of us sit in chairs off the stage. And one by one, Caesar calls us up for our three-minute interviews, broadcasted across all of Panem. And Dowlas wasn't wrong. Caesar feeds off the crowd's energy, and proves his worth by making each tribute memorable by prompting them, joking, laughing.

But despite that I am still nervous out of my mind. It is much easier to ride in a chariot when all you have to do is stand there and wave. Now, I had give a performance. In front of millions and millions.

District 1 goes first, as usual. The girl is all radiance and confidence, blows kisses to the crowd. Ares follows, brutish, strong, proves his strength by picking up Caesar and carrying him over his shoulder halfway across the stage, calling out in response to the crowd's raucous laughter, "What'ya want me to do with 'em?"

The Careers interviews are all similar. The tributes are confident, cocky. In Razzle's interview, he and Caesar share a moment of staged hilarity, comparing the sizes of their muscles. What a difference it is when the first District 3 tribute takes the stage, and it's a tiny, twelve-year-old girl. Caesar instantly changes from joking to sincere. Does his best to make each feel comfortable, and always manages to discover their greatest strength to share with the crowd. Meanwhile, I sit in my chair, nervously rub sweat from my palms. Next to me, Esther stares ahead, blankly. She hasn't said a word or looked at me all day. She probably overheard Zeb and I arguing about her last night.

When Siris takes the stage, the crowd is instantly cheering. His cropped blond hair and handsome face has women in the crowd swooning. I watch in awe as he effortlessly plays up the crowd. A natural superstar. A lethal killer. It is becoming clear that those two seem to go together.

The tribute interviews tick by. Then sooner than I realize Caesar is calling Esther's name. She's in a long, shimmering black gown made of lace and tulle. She looks nervous but at least she's worked on her posture.

Caesar welcomes her with open arms, sensing her timidity in an instant. I don't follow most of the conversation. My heart is racing too fast. Something about the costumes, the Capitol food. Esther actually tries to speak up, and when the buzzer goes off the audience applauds her as much as anyone.

Then it's me.

I force a smile. Walk to the stage with my head held high, wave to the crowd even though they are just a blur of color to me. Shake Caesar's outstretched hand. Sit in one of the round chairs. _Be natural...what is natural? _I decide to lean forward, friendly, open.

"Welcome, Tom!" Caesar's all white teeth and smile lines. I take a deep breath.

"Hello, Caesar!" I reply as enthusiastically as I can.

"How are you finding the Capitol, Tom?"

_I can do this, I can do this, _I coach myself silently._ Just be charming. Lie if you have to._

"It's actually a bit like home, funnily enough." I say. "Lots of buildings. Crowded streets. People crazed by fashion."

The audience laughs.

"Speaking of fashion, Tom," Caesar says excitedly, "you made quite an impression at the opening ceremonies. Everyone is talking about you, and now, with that 9 in training - I think that it is appropriate to say that no one saw _you_ coming!"

"Caesar, you know, a lot of people think that I can't possibly be much competition because I'm from District 8," I say, "and, frankly, I've been moving _fabric_ around all my life, you know?" Light laughter from the crowd. I jump at the opportunity. "I mean, who ever heard of someone using a roll of satin as a weapon?"

Caesar laughs. "Now, that is definitely one I've never heard before! How would that even be possible?"

"You'd have to take the satin off the roll first - and use the roll," I reply, ignoring the disgust in my gut that I am even saying such things. But the crowd loves it all the same, exploding with mirth.

"Now, Tom, I take it you're a smart fellow. You've _obviously_ picked up other skills, am I right?"

"Oh, you know," I respond evasively. "A few things...here and there... I have a habit of picking up skills pretty fast, you know."

"Oh?" Caesar prompts, grinning.

"Yes. For instance, I've never seen a bow in my life. Still not sure what you use it for exactly, I think you shoot stuff with these funny stick things?"

This time I join in the laughter. It occurs to me that these people might be paid to laugh.

"But really-" I say when they quiet down. "I've learned so much in training. I feel like I can take on anything right now."

"...Like a fellow tribute, perhaps? I heard a story about you, Tom, and a certain fiery side of yours that lead to a certain upset during training..." Caesar says with a wicked grin.

"And what did they tell you, Caesar?" I ask innocently.

"Oh, _nothing," _Caesar winks, "only that you seem to not be able to wait to prove yourself worthy of your competitors. I'm sure we're all interested in seeing more of that side of you in the arena."

"You can count on it, Caesar."

"You certainly are mysterious Tom. Tell us, if you will, about your home? What do you miss most?"

_It's okay, I can do this, _I think. _It's almost over. _

"That would be my girlfriend, Caesar." I say at last.

The crowd _awws. _Caesar makes a sympathetic face. _"_She must certainly be special."

"I've known her for a very long time, and I hope to know her years and years more. I know she's counting on me to win this thing so I can come home."

Somewhere, the buzzer goes off. Caesar thanks me. I stand and walk off the stage, feeling numb and overwhelmed. I think I did alright, played it up, smart and witty, but talking about Kearsey proved to be harder than I thought. I sit back in my chair as Caesar welcome's District 9's girl tribute the the stage and I breathe deeply.

_It's over, it's over, _I tell myself.

But it is all just beginning


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Hey there! It's finally here! That chapter you've been waiting for! Just as a heads up, there is a slight change of perspective for a bit in this chapter...but anyway... Enjoy! (and review, maybe? :) )

TTE

* * *

~7~

I know I need sleep. I desperately need sleep. But sleep doesn't come for hours and hours. I lay in bed, stare at the glowing clock numbers, watching my last hours before the arena go by.

There are no words to describe the sickening feeling in my gut, the terror brewing there. As I wait, sleepless, for dawn, I imagine this is what criminals feel, as they wait in cells for death sentences. Except I haven't done anything wrong. None of us have done anything wrong at all.

I think about my family back home, imagine my mother and father sitting up in vigil, waiting for that t.v. screen to turn itself on, where they'll watch in anguish, unable to turn away. But maybe they'll be working by then, only able to catch glimpses, ignoring the sympathetic looks coworkers shoot at them from every direction. I wonder if Kearsey will be watching, and I hope beyond hope, that if I don't make it, she'll be able to turn away.

I wait for the sunrise, then get up, my body responding sluggishly as if it knows what's coming and is doing its best to stop me. From my bedside table, I pick up the small fabric pouch with the marble Kearsey had given me inside. When I dress I make sure to slip it in my pocket, then I sit by the window with my head in my hands until Sunshine finds me.

"There you are! Let's get some breakfast into you. Come along now, it's a big day today..." She speaks softly, without her usual bubbly blitheness.

Food is the last thing I want, but I know I need it. Who knows when my next meal will be?

Breakfast is a quiet affair. For once, Sunshine is silent. I force as much food down as I can and hope that it won't all come back up again. Zeb arrives late, but when he does, he breaks the silence with a low, urgent voice.

"I don't expect either of you to be ready for this, but all the same there are some things you need to know that might just save your life today."

Esther looks up. We both listen.

"First off," Zeb rests both hands on the table as he sits down, fingers splayed, leaning forward, "_do not_ stick around the Cornucopia. It's likely to be an open area with lots of confusion and weapons to be picked up in an instant. You'll be killed. Secondly, you need to find a safe place close to water to hide until things quiet down and most of your competitors have spread out. Lastly, take everything slow, always think things through. _Never_ trust anyone and _always _watch your back."

My heart races as he speaks. _This is happening. This is really happening._ I clench my hands into fists to stop the shaking. _ Pull yourself together,_ I tell myself._ Pull yourself together or you are going to die today._

We sit until it's time. Then we gather around the elevator and Sunshine sighs audibly, looks at the two of us.

"It's been a joy being your escort," she says sincerely, resting a hand on each of our shoulders. "May the odds be ever in your favor, today."

Zeb nods. Then two Capitol men in uniform lead Esther and I into the elevator and the doors slide shut, and when they open again, we're on the roof, blinking in the bright sun.

A hot wind rips at us and we're shepherded onto a hovercraft that is ready and waiting. As soon as the hatch is sealed the craft takes off. I sit across from Esther, who's white as a sheet with red-rimmed eyes, and stare around at the bright white interior in a sort of dream-state. There are no windows. We'll never know where we are going.

At one point, a woman in a white uniform comes up to me and injects something into my forearm. "This is your tracker," she says flatly. "It keeps track of your location and vitals."

I rub the spot on my arm absently. There's a rushing sound in my ears. I would have loved to sleep but the adrenalin pumping through me keeps me tense and alert. I sit and wait, painstakingly, for what seems like hours and hours. How far away is this arena? I don't know how much longer I can take the waiting, and at the same time, I never, ever want the hovercraft to touch down. I long for it to malfunction, break down, go careening toward the ground so that I won't have to face the arena at all. But luck hasn't really been on my side as of late.

At long last, I feel the craft touch down, and we're guided into a long white hallway where Dowlas and Salazara are waiting for us.

I want to say something to Ester, anything. Words of comfort or encouragement, but none come. Just frightened, backwards glances between us as we're lead into our respective launch rooms.

Guards station themselves outside. Dowlas follows me into the small room and closes the door, looks at me.

"Let's get you suited up," he says quietly after a long moment, and I'm almost glad that he doesn't try to comfort me. Doesn't try to insist that everything will be alright, that I'll be okay. He is too honest to say otherwise.

"Are...are stylists ever told what the arena will be?" I ask in a voice like a croak as Dowlas unhooks a long black body suit from the rack. Behind him I see the launch tube. Open and waiting.

"Never," he responds. "Only the Gamemakers know. Here," he throws me a soft black t-shirt and shorts. "You need to put these on first."

A few minutes later, the body suit is zipped up to my chin. It's tight and made of a flexible rubbery material with a thick belt and leaves only my hands, feet, and head exposed. I'm then fit with long gloves of similar material with some sort of clear plastic sewn between each finger. The shoes I'm given, likewise, are thin and supple with that same clear plastic attached to the toes that make my feet look like...my stomach drops. I flex my fingers, spreading them out wide. I may not have seen anything like this in real life, but I have certainly read enough books to recognize it.

"Dowlas," I swallow hard. "Dowlas...these are _fins."_

Dowlas sees the panicked look in my eyes. "You'll never know _exactly _what you're going to be up against until you're in there," he says and pulls a pair of goggles over my eyes. He then pulls a simple blue glove onto his own hand and unwraps from a nest of plastic what looks like a clear, rubbery pancake.

"I am required to explain this last piece of technology to you as it will be vital to your survival in the arena. Without it you will die."

I stare at the thing in his gloved hand. "I thought that was the point," I say slowly.

Dowlas's expression turns dark. "Now, that wouldn't be very entertaining, would it?" He says it with an edge in his voice, like his words aren't his own. He moves in front of me. "Let me show you. It goes on like this."

Dowlas presses the pancake against the lower half of my face and in an instant, it suctions over my nose and mouth. I panic for a second, thinking that it is going to suffocate me, but then in another second, the pancake inflates itself, and rests like a mask, a bubble adhered to my face, and I can breathe normally.

"It has flesh-memory," Dowlas informs me. "You are the first and only one who will ever wear this one, and it will adhere to only your face from now on. You can easily take it off, too. Go ahead," he prompts me, and I tentatively hook my fingers around the edge and pull. The pancake flops back into its original, flat self in my hand.

"It is also specially designed so that it can't just be ripped off by anyone. Once it's on your face, only you, the wearer, can take it off. Straight forward. Simple."

With shaking hands, I place it on my face again, where it attaches instantly.

_But what would I possibly need this for? _I wonder, and the answer that floats to the surface of my mind chills my bones and I feel the sickness growing in me again.

A cool voice issues from an intercom somewhere, announcing two minutes until the launch. Dowlas pulls off the plastic glove and rests his hand on my shoulder. It is so easy to forget how young he is.

"I am so sorry," Dowlas says. "I wish I knew more to tell you."

I nod. It's all I can manage. Before Dowlas leads me to the launch tube, I take the marble, my token, from my old pants pocket and tuck it into one of the small breast-pockets on the body suit. I draw the zipper, and I feel the marble there, pressing against my frantically beating heart.

The cool voice announces one minute until departure.

Dowlas nods. "Good luck to you, Tom. Maybe I'll see you on the other side."

Shuffling awkwardly because of my elongated footwear and my abject terror, I step into the tube, and a glass panel shuts me in in an instant. I turn on the spot and stare at Dowlas, wide-eyed. His gold eyes burn into mine, and he tilts his head down in a slight nod. He is the last thing I see, then I am moving upward. Upward. Through pitch darkness with no sound but my own, pounding heart.

Then everything is blue. All around me, above, below. And I discover that I am still standing in my tube, surrounded on all sides by pressing walls of water. And my first, panicked thought is: _the Gamemakers are going to kill us all._

~.~

All of Panem holds its breath. Not a soul says a word. All are awestruck, none having seen anything like it before.

"As you can see folks," says the bright and beaming face of Caesar Flickerman, appearing on every screen in every home at that very moment, "the Gamemakers have presented us with the most advanced and complex arena we have seen so far. Containing over four square miles of imitation ocean with a special _dual perimeter_ to ensure the stability of the ecosystem, it promises to be the most exciting games yet!

"Now, as you can imagine, there were several considerations the Gamemakers needed to address to ensure a long lasting, excitement filled game. You see those masks? Each tribute wears a mask of the highest technology that acts almost exactly like a fish's lung, extracting the oxygen from the water surrounding it and producing breathable air that is contained in the bubble. It is a self-sufficient and durable mechanism that can be easily removed for the consumption of food and drink. So don't worry folks, if there is one thing these tributes won't be dying from, it's drowning. And oh! Can you just imagine what dangers must lurk in every shadow and corner of this watery world...the likes of which have never been seen before! Get ready ladies and gentleman, for the games that will be talked about for years to come!"

And his words reverberate across every corner of Panem as the countdown begins.

~.~

Sixty seconds. I spend nearly a quarter of it panicking before my common sense kicks in. They don't mean to drown us, why would they? It's just the Gamemaker's new playground. I'd just as well seen it coming with the design of the arena outfits in the first place.

_Alright, Tom, focus._

But it is so difficult to focus when my heart is thumping so fast and my last minute is running out and a voice in the back of my mind keeps screaming, _you're going to die, you're going to die! _

I stare out into the blue, spot the cornucopia. That's when I realize that I, as well as the twenty-three other tributes situated in a circle around the golden horn are all suspended on raised platforms. The cornucopia, itself, sits on a thick post that goes down, down to the rocky, shadowy ocean floor. All around it, weapons, sacks, and other objects float on chords that rise from the depths like black snakes. Behind it all I see rolling cliffs and valleys of rock in the distance. Dark masses of water plants, seemingly endless. Light shines in shafts from what appears to be the surface someways above our heads. _Maybe there is land?_

I am so awestruck by the landscape of the arena that the booming voice of Claudius Templesmith, the Hunger Games announcer, that echos strangely through the depths, takes me completely by surprise.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! Let the fifty-eighth Hunger Games - BEGIN!"

And suddenly water gushes into my tube. I swear. _I'm not ready for this! I'm not ready! I don't even know if I'l be able to swim!_

I push against the side of my tube, but suddenly, it's not there. And there's a moment of confusion, where I just float there, and I see the other newly freed tributes float in place, dazed. But then all hell breaks loose. Tributes who have any confidence in water make a break for the cornucopia, propelling themselves though the water like fish. I need to get away as quickly as possible, but for that I need to swim. Then I remember the surface. The surface! Get to the surface!

Many had the same idea because there is a mad rush to the light, everyone, terrified, for a moment, that they'd have to fight each other and try to survive under the surface. I stroke my arms and legs through the water, and discover I can move fairly easily, and I struggle upward as blurred shapes go by, and people's screams sound distant and echoey. It is difficult to distinguish who is who, everything is moving so fast and especially with the faces partially distorted by the goggles and masks... I freeze. _The masks?_

As realization dawns on me I backtrack instantly. I can breath perfectly with the mask. The Gamemakers never intended for us to go to the surface at all.

And sure enough, in a moment the screaming intensifies, accompanied by ferocious screeching. The first tribute has reached the top. The moment her head breaks the surface, dark shapes, distorted by rippling waves, swoop down at her. Creatures that may have been some kind of bird attack with beak and claw. Blood seeps like ink, spreading and staining the water all over as tributes begin to scramble back down, and the ones with weapons turn and begin to attack.

I didn't look back. I didn't think, I just flee in the confusion. A pack looms into sight before me as I swim and impulsively I grab for it, but suddenly someone is there, and I see a glint of silver as a hand seizes the back of my neck. A sharp pain shoots down my spine. I squirm and I swing my legs back and push back hard. I hear a faint _oof_ as I make contact with stomach and the hand lets go, and I use my momentum to pull the pack from its tie and shoot off into the cover of rock and swaying plant that goes on and on forever, and the plastic webbing helps propel me through the water as I stroke my arms and kick my legs with as much speed as I can muster until I'm aching and my throat is screaming for air and I'm sure I'm not being followed. I finally stop in a hidden nook of rock and gasp, feeling excruciatingly light-headed. I guess these masks aren't perfect. But at least I am still alive. Maybe it is my temporary oxygen deficit, but for a moment I feel completely elated, amazed that I have managed to escape at all. But as my heart slows down, the vivid images of what I have just seen come back to me and all I can see is the ocean turning pink, the screams of the vicious creatures who attacked anything that broke the surface, the madness of the bloodbath as kids who had never been submerged in water in all of their lives, were easily picked off by the stronger ones.

_And that was almost me..._I think. I rub at the back of my neck. What ever that boy had done didn't draw blood, but I ached all up and down my spine. _But now... Now I am a real competitor. _

As the initial fear and adrenaline starts to wear off, I start to think. If I can survive the bloodbath, what else can I survive? Out of necessity I had managed to teach myself to swim in an instant. Maybe I can adapt, and continue to adapt. Maybe, just maybe, I could make it far in these games. But, as I remember, there is a lot more to the games than conflict between tributes. I had to remember things like finding food and water even, especially if this ocean water is salty.

I can breathe normally now, my mask stays securely on my face and with my goggles I can see pretty well. My suit, as I soon discover, is partially weighted so I can move easily, and not float up without control. The water is an even temperature, slightly cool.

I stay in that nook for a long while, confident that I am hidden well. Zeb must be proud that I had managed to follow his instructions so well... But upon thinking of my mentor, my stomach seizes with anxiety as I remember Esther. I can't remember seeing her at the bloodbath at all. I hope she managed to escape, too. I didn't want to imagine her as one of those bodies, drifting...

What a cruel, cruel arena. It's like it intensifies everything. Even the sound seems to travel farther, and if I listen I can hear all sorts of eerie, high-pitched sounds that may have been tributes but can just as easily be something else.

The customary cannon fire that follows the end of the bloodbath rumbles though the arena. And the death count begins. A cannon blast for each of the fallen. I count. _Two, three._ The blasts seem to go on and on. _Six, seven_. Finally, they stop at eleven. _Eleven! _Nearly half, lost only on the first day.

I sit back again and then freeze. A great long fish - it must be some sort of eel - slides out from a crack in the rock face beside me. It is huge. I sit stock still, not daring to breathe, as the ten or eleven foot creature swam lazily by not a foot from my nose. I think I can almost feel its tail brush my cheek. I don't dare to move until it's disappeared into the weeds. I decide then that I needed to move on. There are probably more, and because this is the Hunger Games, I doubt they would remain docile for long.

I strap the pack to the back of my suit. I'll go through it once I move. And I'll need to move fast. Get farther away, find someplace safe to spend the night, to sleep.

_Sleep, _I laugh darkly to myself as I kick off above the line of seaweed, looking over my shoulder every few seconds._ Like I'll be getting any sleep._


	8. Chapter 8

~8~

They are watching me. This very moment I know the Capitol is watching me. Following me with hundreds of camera eyes. I know this should bother me, but for some reason, I feel strangely calm. Or maybe my euphoria from having escaped the bloodbath hasn't completely worn off yet.

I find a ledge hidden in shadow that overlooks the grassy, sandy plain I have been traveling slowly across for most of the afternoon. I haven't run into anyone, just seen a lot of different kinds of fish, and at one point was convinced I had seen something very large and tentacled move under the cover of the dark rock face nearby, but nothing came after me. I guess the Gamemakers have had enough excitement for a while.

I settle down on the ledge, confident that I would be well hidden for a few hours at least. In the fading light filtering in from the surface that is quickly turning the ocean gray, I finally open my pack, which is reasonably lightweight, made of some kind of black tarpaulin. Each object I find is weighted, perfectly, so they float around me or sink slowly into my lap. I find an empty plastic bottle, a little squeeze bottle of iodine, a small, serrated pocket knife, a large spool of a plastic string, an airtight package of some kind of mush, and a tiny jar of unidentifiable black goo.

The bottle draws my attention first. For a while an itching thirst has been growing in my throat, ironic, of course, considering I am submerged in water. But if it is saltwater, I would be out of luck.

Holding in a breath, I pull my mask from my face, let some of the water flow into my mouth and fail to detect any salty bite. _Thank goodness,_ I think. The water is fresh. The arena, as it turns out, is less like a ocean and more like a deep, expansive lake, but whether the creatures and plant life thriving in it even originate from a freshwater background or not, I wouldn't know.

Squishing the mask back on my face, I unscrew the cap to the bottle and let it fill with water, then squeeze a few drops of iodine into it. I have to tilt the bottle sort of upside down to ensure enough iodine actually stays in. I close it up again and wait.

As night falls, hunger groans in my stomach, and I inspect the package of mush. I slit a corner open with the knife, figuring that if it isn't food, it can't have much use. It squeezes out a bit like a sponge and I try a little. It tastes vaguely like cornmeal. It isn't the most appetizing but it settles my stomach.

I lean back against the rock face and watch the rippling of the ocean surface until the anthem starts to play. I watch, awed, as the surface goes completely flat and still. Then the faces of the dead begin to appear above it, clear enough to see now that the water isn't distorting it.

The first to appear is the girl from District 1. I'm taken aback for a second for Career tributes usually last longer than that, but then I remember that the first person to reach the surface, who had to have been quick and strong, must have been her. Next to show are both the tributes from District 3, then it jumps to the face of the boy from 5, then the girl from 6, then both from 7, and then...my stomach drops as Esther's face appears in the sky. Just for a couple seconds. Not enough seconds. And in a heartbeat she's replaced by the face of the young girl from 9, who in turn is replaced by the boy from 11 and the boy from 12. And like that they're gone, faded into the grayness of the night, like they never had existed there at all.

I feel numb. It it strange, because I know that all those kids are dead, but they seem so distant right now, so far away. Even the ones who are still alive somewhere in this watery world seem miles and miles away. Or maybe it's me that's far away, _my_ mind that feels detached and distant. Like I'm not really in the games at all, but somewhere else, isolated, unreachable.

But I know I'm not isolated at all, because they're watching me, watching everyone, watching with excitement and glee and horror. Watching us all die, slowly. Watching Esther die. Esther, who like many, never stood a chance.

I lay still for a long time. I don't get cold because my suit seems to insulate my heat. I think at one point I sleep out of sheer exhaustion, let my mind sink into blissful unknowing, but the boom of the canon soon wakes me again, sometime in the darkness, and, again, I remember.

~.~

By the time dawn arrives I'm famished. I let myself have only a few small bites of the mush and drink plenty of water, but I know I'm going to need to find more food. Catching fish seems like the best option, but all I have is the small knife and maybe that roll of string but neither seem like they would be helpful on their own. I can try making a lure but I have nothing for a hook. I think about eating seaweed. People eat seaweed, right? I try and think back to training. There were a few aquatic plants at the wild edibles station, right? It seems so long ago, but I remember a small, purplish one with nubby, symmetrical leaves. I'll have to start with that.

I head out as soon as I'm able, not wanting to stay in one place too long, keeping an eye out for that purple seaweed, and, of course, those things that might jump out at me and try to kill me.

As I swim, it occurs to me that the arena is round. I have been swimming along the side of a long mountain rage of rock that practically reaches the surface and seems to go on forever. I also get the sense that I am swimming at a slightly curved angle, too. Maybe these rocks marked the border all the way around, perhaps with the cornucopia in the center?

Around late morning I find a crop of what looks like the purple weed and I pull some up.

"_Test a new plant on your skin first..." _I hear the voice of the Capitol specialist in my mind. "_...and wait for any reaction..."_

I pull off my glove and rub the plant against the soft skin of my wrist. The more I inspect the plant the more it looks familiar, but I'm not taking chances. I take a nubby leaf and rub it against my lips after a little while and wait some more. I back myself against the rock outcropping while I wait, so nothing can sneak up on me.

When no reaction occurs, I chew a tiny piece in my mouth. It doesn't taste like much at all. I swallow and wait one last time.

Nothing happens.

Confident that I have indeed found the right seaweed, I collect as much as I can and stuff it into my pack.

_I've got water, I've got food for now. What do I do now?_

There is nothing for me to do except keep on moving, always keeping an eye out for danger. But nothing happens. I don't see anyone or anything all afternoon. _What are the Gamemakers waiting for? What are they doing?_

It soon becomes clear to me, however, that the Gamemakers are simply waiting.

Evening is approaching when I come across a deep, dark gorge. Some kind of tall seaweed with long, spiny leaves like spider legs grow out of it, filling up the entire space. The only thing I can think of what kinds of terrible creatures must live down there. I skirt the edge, trying to find my way around it, and I'm just thinking that I probably shouldn't swim anywhere near this spooky landmark when something grabs hold of my leg. I spin around. One long, spindly seaweed stalk is wrapped tightly around my ankle, and to my horror, I see other stalks stretching, reaching out with hungry leaves like beckoning fingers, reaching for me. I struggle, but the seaweed is strong and is slowly pulling me back. I twist around and reach for the knife in my pack. Grabbing its handle, I lash out at the plant and sever its hold with a clean swipe. I scramble back along the sandy bottom and keep my distance this time, breathing hard. The seaweed has pulled back and now waves slightly in the water, appearing just as harmless as before, and as if it didn't just try to drag me down into its dark, murky lair.

I hate to think what might have happened if the plants succeeded. One thing is certain: it isn't the way I wanted to go.

And as if on cue, the cannon blast echos through the arena. I turn, looking around. Somewhere, there are more tributes. Somewhere there must be fighting. And unfortunately, my luck at not running into any of it has probably run its course by now.

Still shaken by the close call with the carnivorous gorge, a find another shadowy outcropping of rock to spend the night, and as I settle down, the anthem plays and the surface goes still.

Two today. The girl from 5 and the girl from 11. Most likely the Careers have formed their pack and are slowly hunting everyone down.

I eat sparingly, I drink, I close my eyes and try to rest. I think about home. The hot, perfectly dry streets. They were always a perfect temperature this time of night. A small breeze may even find its way through the claustrophobic alleys. I think about Kearsey, working tirelessly, with those blue eyes leaping up to the television screen as often as permitted, maybe to get a glimpse of me. I hope that she's not too tired tonight. I hope that her brothers aren't too hungry.

I take out the marble from my pocket and hold it tightly in my hand. I need to get out of here. I really need to win this thing so I can get back home. But of course, that's what all my competitors want, too.

That night I'm woken up by a series of unsettling noises. There's an eerie wailing that reverberates through the water, that could be coming from any direction, that goes on and on, getting fainter, then louder and fainter again. Then it's the sudden rumbling, that I _feel_ more than I hear. Somewhere nearby, large boulders or something similar, must be rolling off the mountain range and tumbling sluggishly to the bottom. When they hit, I feel it like a snap on my spine. Rocks underwater, I realize, must carry vibrations in a different way. I lay awake for a long time, but nothing finds me, no rocks crush me, and that wailing thing wails on and on until it drifts away with the coming dawn.

~.~

Close to where I spent the night I find the remnants of a fish, with bones bare and bleached white. I collect some of the needle-like ribs. I can make some kind of hook out of these, I think. I can catch some fish. But how would I cook them? Fire is certainly out of the question...

So for the time being, I hunt for more seaweed. This morning, the water is clear and bright, and almost peaceful. It is so easy to forget. Forget where I really am and how much time has passed and the gravity of my situation.

I'm just swimming around a spot of particularly rocky terrain - perhaps the remnants of the avalanche I heard in the night - when, looking up, I come face to face with the wide, terrified eyes of the girl from District 12.

I'm so shocked that I backpedal instantly, pull the knife from my pocket and brace myself, ready for anything she might throw at me. But then in another second, I realize she isn't attacking me, and in fact she hasn't even moved. And then I see that her right arm is crushed between two fallen slabs of rock. She is helpless and stuck, and staring at me as though I am the most terrifying creature known to man.

"P-please..." I hear her beg, "please don't hurt me..."

"What- - no," I say quickly, and pocket my knife at once. "No, I'm...I won't hurt you."

She looks so scared and so young - couldn't be more than thirteen.

I approach her cautiously. "You must have been here all night," I say, trying to sound gentle and nonthreatening. "Maybe I can try to move that rock off you?"

But a sudden voice in the back if my head that sound very much like Zeb stops me. "_Don't trust anyone..."_

What if this girl is playing a trick on me? Luring me in close enough so that she can stab me in the gut. What if she is just pretending to be trapped. I've seen that kind of stunt in the Games before.

But either this little girl is a great actor or she is really trapped. Really scared. And her body suit is torn at the bit of her arm that is visible and the skin underneath is blotched purple with internal bleeding.

I make my decision.

"You're name's Haddie, right?" I say in a friendly way, swimming up to the rock that had her pinned. _She's scared of me, _I realize. _Scared of me because I got a nine in training and might kill her any second..._ But hopefully she'll catch on that I am trying to help her and that, despite it all, I don't want to hurt her, nor do I want to hurt anyone at all. The very idea makes me feel sick.

Getting a good grip on the rock, I brace my feet against another and pull. It doesn't budge. I push with my feet and try to roll the rock over towards me. Haddie pulls at her arm, whimpering like a kitten.

Slowly, the rock begins to give, and soon it rolls to its side enough that Haddie's arm slides out and she falls backwards in the water.

I let go, panting a little. Haddie clutches at her arm which in no doubt is broken in more than one place.

"There," I say. "Now you can- - hey, wait!"

With a terrified backwards glance, Haddie bolts off into swaying seaweed. I stare after her in disbelief. So I know that she was terrified and I don't blame her for fleeing, but I clearly wasn't going to hurt her. I couldn't help but feel a little annoyed at her for not even thanking me, and at the same time, I couldn't help but feel a little lost.

She's the first person I've seen since the bloodbath, and meeting her only made me realize how isolated and lonely I really felt. The feeling takes over me. It's suffocating.

I wish I had an ally. In this place of constant fear and anxiety, I don't want to be alone. But the Gamemakers control this game, not me. So I keep on moving. I swim into the afternoon, getting farther and farther or maybe nowhere at all. I don't care where I end up, only that I find some way to ease my pressing solitude. But I don't find any. I just get an unsettling feeling in my gut that I might go crazy in this empty, lonely place.

A grayish cloud drifts off in the distance before me. It sparkles in the sunlight, undulates like waves. I stop and eye it warily. What is this new creation of the Gamemakers? It stays relatively still for a long while until I think maybe I'm too far way for it to harm me, but then it spreads out before me like an explosion, suddenly becoming like a great wall of gray, and it begins to move towards me. As it gets closer, I start to see the individual bodies, writhing. The individual pairs of blood red eyes. The individual sets of gaping, glistening teeth.

And I know what kind of fish they are. I've seen them in books with their graphic illustrations enough to make your stomach churn.

A massive school of piranha is headed right for me.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: **Yaaaaaaaay suspense. You guys are my favorites. Thanks for coming back :)

TTE

* * *

~9~

No time for any crafty escape plan. I just turn tail and flee - swim with all my might so that I might put some distance between me and that wall of ferocious teeth. The piranha advance on me, from behind and the side, driving me away from the perimeter and out into the open. Towards the center.

I swim, shooting forward frantically, try to spot some place to hide or escape. But I am the piranha's target. There is no place that they can't get me. It is flee or be devoured.

My arms and legs scream from fatigue but I press on. I have to keep going, but I'm not fast enough. I start to feel the fish snap at my feet. I kick viciously. But then they're all around me. I lash out with my knife but there are too many of them. Then they're biting at me, tearing holes in my suit, my skin. I writhe and scream and I know that I'm done for. That this will be the end, that I'll die, right here and now.

But then the piranha stop attacking. The water goes still. What's going on? I'm shaking uncontrollably as I slowly peek out from the fetal position I've curled myself into and look around. The fish are gone. Completely gone, as suddenly as they had appeared, as though the Gamemakers had thought twice about letting them kill me. Or maybe they had other motives... I am certainly no longer off in my secluded corner. Maybe the attack was just the Gamemakers' sick way of making me move.

I swim, awkwardly, to the nearest rock jutting out from the sand and collapse against it. Every part of me hurts. I have bites covering my legs and arms: little bits of me ripped right out with those nasty teeth. Each wound is small, but now water leaks in through the holes in my suit and I know, as soon as my adrenalin wears off, I'll freeze without the insulation. I look through my pack. I don't have anything to bandage myself with and who knew what kind of nasty infections could happen with constant water exposure. But what I do have, however, is this jar of black goo.

I unscrew the top, dip my finger it. It's the consistency of putty and water resistant. For the suit? I take a bit on my finger and spread it over one of the holes on my thigh. It sticks to the suit, sealing up the hole. _Well_, I think, _that solves half of the problem_. And perhaps I might get some sponsors to help me out with the rest...

I stuff some spongy seaweed in a few of the holes to deter bleeding, then I cover as many of the holes as I can before I run out of the stuff, wincing uncontrollably as I do from the stabbing pain of the bites. At least now they'll be protected from the elements.

I'm so exhausted I want to just sleep right there, but I know I am very vulnerable out in the open like this. I need to find more of those large rock formations where I know I can't get snuck up upon. But my muscles scream in protest when I try to swim, and I can feel the blood pulsing in every one of my bites. So I just shuffle slowly and painfully across the bottom, staying low to the ground and keeping my eyes peeled. I am bound to be closer to my competitors now. Maybe that's what the Gamemakers wanted all along. I just hope against hope I won't run into any of them now, now that I'm in no shape to put up a fight.

It's getting dark. A kind of rocky knoll stretches out before me and I scramble along the side of it. It gets higher as I go along and soon I'm moving along the side of a sizable cliff, by this point almost entirely encased in shadow. If I can find a cave or some kind of depression here, I think I should be safe for the night.

The anthem plays just as I discover a small ledge and I look up to see the face of the boy tribute from District 9 before the sky grows dark again. I sit wearily and think that I could just fall asleep in a second, when, a little off in the distance, five dark shapes suddenly materialize from behind another knoll, and I can hear them laughing - it's a strange sound under the water - and my whole body seizes up as a new wave of fear takes over me. The Career pack is no more than a hundred meters away from me.

They don't know I'm here - they can't, otherwise they would be coming right for me. The shadows must hide me enough. Even so, head pounding, knife gripped tightly in my hand, I slowly back deeper onto the ledge, not daring to breathe. Maybe they won't notice me at all. Maybe they'll just swim on by...

But then my foot catches on something laid out on the ledge floor, and suddenly I'm being flung off the ledge as a net draws tight around me, and a few rocks are dislodged and they crack off the side of the cliff as they fall, echoing and easily audible by the pack of Careers whose heads suddenly snap up, and they make a beeline for me, shouting with glee.

_Oh god they are going to kill me...how did I not see this trap? How could I be so stupid? _I think in a panic, but I can't afford to panic. So I rack my brain. Think, Tom! I look at the net. Strong buoys seal the net shut at the top by their constant strain upward, while the only reason I haven't just shot up to the surface is because the net is still suspended from the bottom on a cord attached to the ledge. Think, Tom, think! I have the knife, but they'd surely catch me if I cut myself out and try to swim for it. In the meantime the Careers are getting closer. Then I get an idea. A crazy one.

I take the knife and swiftly slice though the net from head to toe, but then with my free hand, I hold it closed, to the side, unnoticeable. It might not even work, but I don't have much of a choice.

"Well, look who we've got here!" The Career who is unmistakably Razzle stops a little ways in front of the others and grins ferociously. "I hope you guys don't mind if I claim this one. I've got a certain bone to pick..."

Razzle pulls from his belt a long, curved blade, runs his finger along it with relish and says to me, "Not so tough now, are you, Eight?"

Behind him the others hold back. They grin and egg Razzle on. My heart is so loud in my chest and a rushing in my ears makes it so I can barely follow any of what they say, but I do notice District 4, Siris, does not jeer but cocks his head and looks at me, and for a horrible moment I think he's caught on to my plan, but he doesn't say anything.

Razzle swims closer. "We were wondering where you'd got to," he says with malice. "But of course, we figured it would be a bit more of a challenge to catch you." They laugh.

Leaning backwards, I hold my breath as he draws nearer. Just one more moment. Just one more moment. Closer, just a bit closer... The tip of Razzle's blade slides though the net as he taunts me. _Just a bit closer._

"I guess, as it turns out," Razzle says, "_I'm_ not the one with the _thimble_ for a brain, after all-"

_Now! _I spring forward, opening the net wide with both my arms so it trails behind me and hurl myself right over Razzles head and kick him hard in the back. Razzle reels forward and gets caught up in the net and as he struggles to pull himself free, I dive and slice the rope anchoring the net in one, clean swipe.

Razzle screams as the buoys rocket him upward. He thrashes around wildly, but he can't pull away in time. The moment his body breaks the surface the ferocious birds are on him, ripping and tearing, and the arena is filled with his screams and the bird's shrieks and the Careers and I just float in a daze, the Careers not quiet certain of what had just happened, and I, amazed that I'm still alive. And then there's a shriek of rage and District 2's Blythe lurches at me with a forked spear. I jump back, holding my knife tight and expect the worst, but then Siris lunges for Blythe and holds her back by the arms.

"Wait," he says in a low, strong voice.

Blythe shakes him off, looking from Siris to me and back again.

"He just killed Razzle," she hisses back through her teeth after a moment. The pause that follows is full of the bird's shrieking up above. Razzle's stopped screaming. "I think it's appropriate to return the favor," she adds harshly.

"Return the favor," jeers Ares, his hulking form looming over all of them.

"Yeah, what _are _we waiting for?" asks Delta.

Siris doesn't take his eyes off me. "I think he can be useful to us," he says finally. "He's rather clever, if you didn't notice."

"I'm not going to be your pet, if that's what you're thinking," I say loudly, still hunched over in a defensive crouch, gripping my knife so tightly I'm starting to lose feeling in my fingers. My body's threatening to pass out. I have to shake my head every few seconds to stay focused.

The cannon sounds. The birds at the surface have all gone quiet. I don't look up. I don't want to see the body.

"Oh, no, Tom," Siris comes closer, seeming to be completely unperturbed by the loss of his pack member. He steps a foot onto the ledge. His hands at his sides are empty, open. "We want you as an ally."

"We _what?_" hisses Blythe.

"That's right," Siris ignores her. In the shadowy night, it's hard to make out his face exactly. He's not being serious. He can't be. My mind reels. An ally? Me? He doesn't want to kill me and instead wants to work along side me? This is certainly changes things.

I stare back at them, momentarily speechless. The Careers are looking at each other, significantly, and I realize that I should have seen this coming. You don't get away easy with a nine in training. Siris must really want me in their pack. That, or there is some other ulterior motive... In the interest of my life, however, I am not going to be as stupid as to refuse. If I refused, they'd probably just kill me.

"I don't like it," hisses Blythe to Siris. "I don't trust him."

"What's trust got to do with it? He's valuable," Siris shoots back.

"Yeah," Ares puffs himself up. "If he's such a genius, why can't we use him to solve our _little problem?"_

"Exactly," Siris says.

"But..." Blythe starts.

"Oh, what's the difference," Delta says abruptly. She'd been patiently treading water in the background throughout the whole ordeal and now squares her shoulders and glares at Blythe. "Let him help us. _I_ don't have a problem with him. _Razzle_ was the one who wouldn't shut up about cutting the kid open. Besides," she adds, "I'm _starving_, as are all of you."

Blythe crosses her arms but doesn't retort. She just glares.

"What do you say, Eight?" Ares grins at me. "Gonna _run with the wolf pack, _eh_?"_

"Tom?" Siris raises his eyebrows.

It's not like I have a real choice in the matter.

"I'll do it," I say, getting the words out without a tremor. "But how do I know that you won't just kill me?"

"That's what an alliance is, Tom," Siris replies patiently. "It's an unspoken rule, broken only when there is no longer any other competition." He cracks a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "And once it's down to us, well, let's say we..._go our separate ways."_

I am in no doubt to what _that_ meant. That is always the audience's favorite, when the Career pack breaks up. At the end of the games, when the tributes are, more often than not, down to the last few Careers, they hunt each other down. All friendships forgotten. Hunt each other like animals without conscience. And I know, I'm sure, these Career tributes would be no different. This is, in no doubt, a dangerous group to associate myself with. I'd have to really keep one eye open, always expect trickery. I don't know yet how sound the rules of an alliance are, but I wouldn't put it passed any of them to stab me the moment my back is turned. _But_, as I keep reminding myself, _it is this, or they kill you on the spot, right now... _And, as I also remind myself, this could possibly work out for the better. I'd probably have access to the cornucopia. I could get supplies, real food, real bandages for my aching, throbbing bite wounds.

Siris swims closer and extends his hand to me. I wish it wasn't so dark. The moonlight offered casts everything in such deep shadow, it's hard to see faces, expressions. Slowly, I lower the knife. I don't shake his hand. I just stare at him, trying to stare through him. Trying to see his real motives. But Siris is as blank as a book without writing. I'm wound up, so tense I don't think I can move, but they beckon me forward, and in a moment, a moment of insanity perhaps, I'm among them. And I feel as though I can hear the collective breaths being held in the audience in the Capitol. The gasping of my family at home. And of Kearsey... In any other situation this would qualify as a death wish. But things change in the Games, I've noticed. People change. I've changed.

Blythe looks at me darkly. I notice at once that she hasn't tucked away that forked spear but grips it tight at her side. She leans forward and hisses in my ear, "All of us are able to kill you in a heartbeat, you know that, Eight. So don't try anything."

"Of course not," I say back flatly, and a sudden realization dawns on me. Blythe, in a way, is frightened of me. Maybe they all are. _I_ could be double-crossing them, just as much as I am aware they may be double-crossing me. And because the audience right now is probably squirming with excitement and crazed speculation over who must be duping who, I crack a secret, knowing smile that goes unnoticed by my new allies, but surely caught for a million other eyes to see.

I feel brave and powerful among them.

I am their equal.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Apologies for lateness. I hope the awesomeness makes up for it :)

* * *

~10~

I follow the career pack to their temporary camp-out. It is just a large, flat rock with a good view of the surroundings. I keep it to myself, but it is a struggle to keep up with them, four relatively unharmed, physically fit kids. And I am so exhausted I could pass out, and my bites burn dully, unrelenting.

The Careers settle down. No one talks, but they all have an eye on me. I know I should be talking precautions. I know I should be ready for any kind of attack from them, now, when I am most vulnerable. But no one seems to be in the mood for secret plans. They all seem to be just as tired as I am. I lay down on the rock, my body aching, not daring to peal off any of the patched holes to check on the state of my wounds. I lay off to the side. It isn't my ideal resting spot, so out in the open and vulnerable, but I have a good view each of my new companions. And each of them can see me.

I force myself to stay conscious until I know some of them are asleep, then, as soon as I let my eyes close, sleep is instantaneous.

~.~

I wake with a start. It feels like early morning but I can never be so sure in this arena. The water, I notice for the first time, is icy cold and I shiver. Or maybe it is the handful of holes still left in my suit that has made me more susceptible to it.

The Careers are splayed out across the rock. All of them seem to be asleep. My body aches with stiffness and my stomach aches with hunger.

Thinking of my meager store of food I roll over slowly and reach for my pack. But then I stop. From a crook in his black-suited arm I see Siris's pale gray eyes watching me. Not wanting to make him think that I am planing on running away or taking them out as they all sleep, I prop myself up on my elbow, stare right back at him. I hadn't noticed before because of the darkness, but covering the length of the side of Siris's face is a trail of pink, rounded welts. A quick look around confirms that the others have similar lacerations. In the back of my mind I remember something they'd said the night before, about a certain problem. A problem they want me to solve. I had been so tired, I realize I never found out what it is.

"So, what is this 'problem' you were talking about last night?" I ask Siris, quietly as to not wake the others. A few fish dart between us in a flash of silver.

Siris props his head up on his arm. Studies me. "Some monster of a creature has taken up residence in the cornucopia," he says finally. "We haven't been able get at any of the supplies for the past couple days. We've been living off seaweed like bottom-feeders."

That would explain why Delta said that they were all starving.

"So you haven't had any food? I thought you and Delta were fishers of some kind, being from Four."

"Oh, sure," he replies seriously, "but have you ever tried catching a fish with just a knife, or even your bare hands? It's not easy. Especially underwater like this. And when that thing showed up...well, it was one of those 'drop everything and get your ass out of there' kind of situations."

"Oh..." That makes me feel uneasy. What kind of creature would be dangerous enough that a pack of careers couldn't kill it?

"Well," Siris continues with a sideways look, "We figured you'd offer some insight on how to get rid of it, seeing as you're so quick to come up with plans..."

"So you want me to help get rid of it?"

"That's right."

I narrow my eyes. Siris is so difficult to read. "Then after that," I say slowly, sardonically, "are you just going to try to kill me again...then, when you're done with me?"

Siris rolls onto his back and looks up to the rippling, blue-white surface. To his side Delta has started to stir. The others are beginning to wake. "Who knows," he says finally, "you may prove to be more useful alive rather than dead."

~.~

"It's in there head first," Siris is explaining. "It's impossible to reach its body when it's wedged in like that. You get anywhere near the opening and its tentacles shoot out and try to strangle you."

The five of us are gathered around the base of the metal pillar that supports the cornucopia, craning our necks to see the great golden horn above us. All the supplies that were tethered around it have been moved - presumedly into the cornucopia. The cornucopia where some fearsome monster now lurks.

I swallow. Try to think. I've been feeling the sleep deprivation all morning and it weighs me down. Worst of all, my bites, the red and fleshy white of my torn skin, are threatening infection. Some kind of antibiotic and proper bandages are the first thing I will look for once the creature is out...if I'm still alive...

"...Then if you manage to get any closer-" Siris continues.

"-None of us could get any closer," interrupts Blythe, rubbing at the welts on her cheek.

"We'd chop off its tentacles," Ares adds. "But there'd always be more."

I wipe at the lenses of my goggles. "Well," I say slowly. "It's too protected in there for us to fight it. We'll need to lure it out."

"With what, exactly?" Blythe narrows her eyes.

I look right at her and make sure not to blink. I remember reading somewhere that that's how wild animals show dominance and strength. "The only thing we've got: ourselves," I respond.

"Sounds like a great way to get us all killed," she shoots back, not meeting my gaze.

"No, that's good," Siris says. "We need to get at the body."

I nod. "A couple of us will lure it out - aggravate it, and then, unless it has tentacles growing out of its face, it'll be an easy target from the back for the rest of us."

"Siris and I are the best swimmers," says Delta. "We'll bate it."

"And we'll get 'em from the back," Ares grins. Bloodthirsty. They all are. Even Siris cracks a smile.

"It's hunting time," he says.

There are only a few weapons between them. Blythe's forked spear. Ares's cutlass. Delta carried some kind of short staff with a spear-like blade at the end, and Siris pulled a dagger from his belt. And I had my knife, somewhat small and insignificant in comparison.

"Give me your knife," Delta says at once. "You'll need the larger weapon."

I don't hesitate to switch but the spear feels strange and unnerving in my hands. Delta catches my expression and she smirks, eyes bright.

"Never fought something like this before, have you?"

"None of us have," Siris says pointedly. He taps his blade against the pole, the _clink_ sound is hard and tinny. "Everyone set on their positions? Yes? ...Okay, let's go."

My heart starts to race as we begin to swim upward. Upward. Siris and Delta split off and Ares, Blythe and I slowly ascend the side of the cornucopia and perch ourselves on the top, overlooking the mouth.

Siris and Delta keep their distance at first, a little ways apart, they look to each other and communicate with hand gestures I've never seen.

Then they close in, slowly, inching forward, gripping their knives, ready to spring.

They're no more than ten feet from the mouth when the first, massive, purplish tentacle shoots out like a spear between them and curls back ready to snag them both, but the two are ready for it. Shooting back, they dodge the tentacle and then the next one, moving swiftly and almost gracefully. The next tentacle that shoots out - Siris lashes out at it, and the next and the next, dodging, swiping, a dance of tribute, blade, and monster.

Then a low, eerie wailing starts up from inside the cornucopia. It's a sound I recognize, from out in my solitude, from my second night in the arena. I remember it echoing. Traveling through the depths. And this...this is where it must have ended up.

"It's getting annoyed," I shout over the sound. "Get ready!"

Siris and Delta shoot farther and farther back, jabbing knives into its skin at every opportunity, and the creature stretches and reaches for them, trying to swat them away like bothersome flies. Slowly, it begins to slide out, inch by inch. I grip the spear tightly to stop my hands from shaking. I am not looking forward to this. I am dreading it. _Here we go..._

The creature... It's some kind of massive squid...but squid aren't the thickness of a train...squid don't have gaping jaws with six-inch teeth or make such a horrible, almost mechanical sounding wail. This creature is far from natural.

With battle cries, Ares and Blythe attack the squid's cone-shaped body with fierce lashes. I make to follow, but I notice that something is wrong almost immediately. The squid's innards are protected by what could only by a deep purple and grey spotted exoskeleton. The Career's weapons collide with it over and over but they just grate off its side. Meanwhile, tentacles writhe everywhere. Everything is confusion. Delta - it might not have been Delta - screams. I'm on the verge of panic. This plan...it has to work! It has to work, or I am good as dead.

Then I catch sight of the great, staring, yellow eye. It's massive, the size of my head. The eye, that's it! Without another thought, I lunge with my spear, adrenalin carrying me forward, just as Ares and Blythe maneuver themselves into the danger of the tentacles to get at the unprotected belly, my spear plunges deep into the center of the creature's eye. The squid lets out a terrible screaming sound. Inky-black liquid gushes from it. Its limbs flail uncontrollably and the water churns and I can't see a thing through the back ink and I've let go of the spear and am struggling to get away when a tentacle catches me, the air crushed out of me as I'm catapulted through the water and empty space.

I'm completely dazed and turned around. I don't know which way is up. The water is filled with the writhing and howling of the creature until I catch a glimpse of it as it shoots out of the black cloud it created and careens away into the blue, trailing black and blood.

Then all is silent. Except for the sound of my breathing and the wailing, growing fainter and fainter into the distance.

As the black cloud starts to thin and diffuse, I can make out my allies picking themselves up, regrouping. I swim towards them.

"Report," calls Siris.

"Fantastic!" Booms Ares from the top of the cornucopia, with a large grin despite the fact that he's sporting four new nasty looking scrapes at his knees and elbows.

"No one dead?" Blythe says with an edge of disappointment which I can't help but feel is directed at me.

"No one," I say back.

"I guess the Gamemakers weren't too keen on having that thing kill us so soon," Siris says.

And then Delta makes a noise and we all look at her. A large tear in her suit stretches from her neck to her shoulder, and underneath, we're all quick to notice, a deep gash bleeds profusely.

"Looks like Squidy got someone after all," says Ares with glee.

"Oh, shut up," Delta hisses. She clenches her teeth as she presses on it with her palm. "It's nothing."

It is obviously not nothing. It is bleeding too much to be nothing. Ares and Blythe just shrug and head off into the cornucopia to dig out their sorely missed food and supplies. Siris and I hang back.

"There'll be med stuff inside," Siris says to her.

"Yeah, I know," Delta replies curtly.

"You can patch it up alright, don't worry about it."

"I got it, Siris." She grimaces, and I know she's holding back. That she's in a lot of pain, but isn't showing it. That she's terrified that this will lead to her end, but has to be tough.

I get a good look at the wound myself and I know without needing to be any sort of medic that it is too deep to just patch up. It needs to be stitched.

Delta shakes her head, her long black braid waving like a fish behind her. "Let's get some food, I'm starved," she says but her lightheartedness is forced.

We dig through the supplies, but I don't look for food like the others, despite my gnawing hunger. I look for a med kit. But not for me. My bites are harmless in comparison, and I can tell Delta's initial strength is fading. But all I find is a container of bandages and rubbing alcohol, which is perfect for me, but not for any serious wounds.

Around me, others pack into the packages of dried meat and corn mush similar to what I had, pealing off and reattaching their masks with each bite. Blythe lazily picks through weapons. Ares works on his cutlass. Siris and Delta sit on the rim of the horn, talking quietly. I swim over to them.

"There isn't much in the way of meds," I say.

"I noticed," Delta replies humorlessly.

"Your sponsors'll come through," Siris says reassuringly.

"Wouldn't count on it," she says darkly.

"A needle and tread doesn't cost a fortune, Delta."

Suddenly, I remembered the contents of my own pack. The spool of plastic thread. The fish bones I had collected so long ago. And I remembered reading once that in ancient cultures before the era that was before the Dark Days even, needles were made from fish bones.

_But... _I think, _is this something I really want to do?_ As I pick up my pack, I fight a secret battle of morals. My survival counted on the rest of the tributes being killed. In the interest of my life I should really just step back and let Delta bleed. It would be one less threat in the end.

But I know, almost at once, that I can't let that happen. Even if she happens to be my worst enemy, I can't go about watching her suffer when I can do something about it. The pain on her face is too much like the pain on the laborers' faces back home, with backs bent to breaking, pulling a fifteen-hour shift to feed families. It is like the pain on the faces of the children that had no food in their bellies for days, who slept out in the streets because their parents had worked themselves into their graves.

Delta isn't my enemy. None of them are. My real enemy sits in plush robes in fancy homes on the other side of the television screen.

So I grit my teeth, close my eyes. "I can sew it," I say.

I smooth a fish bone, one that had a chink in the end, on the textured surface of the horn until it's even and sharp. I squirt some of the alcohol into one of the bandages and roll the bone onto it until it is as clean as it will get. Then I take a length of the thread, snag it on the spit end and turn to Delta.

"This isn't necessary," she says defiantly, eyes narrowed. "Do you even know what you are doing?"

"Yes, it is," I reply flatly. "And yes, I _have_ sewn before."

She's weak enough that she doesn't put up any more of a fight, so with a deep breath, I sew up the gaping wound to the best of my ability.

And it's then that I realize that it doesn't matter, in the long run, if I survive or not, if I ever see my home and family again. Those things...they are selfish things. And as powerless as I am in this great expanse of arena, I know that what really matters is not how or by whom my peers are killed so that I may live, but that I don't let myself become the Gamemaker's toy, to be manipulated and played with. I don't want to be just another one of their victims. The Capitol is the only real enemy in this game.


	11. Chapter 11

~11~

The events of that morning were apparently enough excitement for one day, for the afternoon was a quiet one. And I was remarkably calm during that time, too. For the first time I had a full stomach, a wonderfully luxurious feeling, and had finally gotten a chance to properly take care of my bites. And the Careers seemed content to just laze around the rest of the day, lounging on the cornucopia, exploring the supplies. Everyone stuck to themselves. The alliance, of course, didn't extend to friendships.

I sit sideways on the edge of the cornucopia, my back to the smooth inside edge with one foot dangling off into the expanse of blue. As relaxed as I am I make sure to keep in mind that all of this is, of course, temporary. The audience will be soon bored and more blood will need to be shed to appease them. So I keep one precautionary hand on my knife and one eye on my allies and then try to let my mind wander, blissfully away. Back home. To peace and safety. Without pain and fear.

"You've always got that look on your face." Siris's head appears around the mouth of the horn by my feet.

"What kind of look?" I ask. He pulls himself up. He, like me, always has some sort of blade in his hand. But he holds it casually and non-threateningly.

"Like you're plotting something," he says.

"That would be because I'm plotting the best way to kill everyone." I reply lightly.

He laughs. "You're funny, kid. I'm glad I didn't kill you in the bloodbath."

I remember, suddenly, the hand seizing the back of my neck in those first, frantic moments in the arena. I stare at him. Did he mean that he let me go on purpose? No, he couldn't have. I had kicked him too hard.

A little ways off, Ares is shooting some kind of aquatic crossbow at one of the tribute pedestals over and over. Again and again. Siris notices me watching.

"It's pretty crazy to think about, you know?" he says. "That we're in the arena."

I don't reply. I'm imagining those torpedo-like arrows embedding themselves into an actual person. The thought makes me shiver.

"It's hard to imagine that I had a different life before this, you know? But then again, I was always training for this. As were the others," he adds, nodding in Ares's direction.

I look sideways at Siris. Delta and Blythe were somewhere else, out of ear shot.

"You seem to have a lot of power over them," I say. "How are you so sure they're not going to try killing you while you sleep?"

He looks at me thoughtfully with those strange, almost translucent eyes. When he responds, his tone is serious and his smile is gone. "I don't. But I'm a better killer than the rest, even if they won't admit it. They wouldn't dare attack me. I sleep with one eye open, you know."

"And how do _I_ know that they won't just kill _me_ in my sleep?"

"Because," he replies after another pause, "they know that I'll kill them if they do."

_What? _I raise my eyebrows.

He sees my expression. "I think you have a lot to offer," he explains. "Razzle was no loss. He had too much of a temper and not enough brain. Ares is strong but that's the extent of it. Blythe is a good fighter but she's too impulsive. She doesn't think things through."

"And Delta?" I ask curiously, surprised that he is even telling me these things.

"I've known Delta for a while. Trained with her. She may be quiet but she knows how to win a fight. If the battle comes down to her and me, you can be sure she's put up one hell of a fight."

~.~

The evening comes and goes with nothing but the picture of Razzle from late the night before appearing in the sky. I try to ignore the disgust in myself that I feel upon seeing that reminder in the sky, and the disgust in the other Careers, who, after spending days and days with him, don't so much as bat an eye at his loss. Not even Blythe.

In the morning, out of concern for the dwindling food supply, a few of us venture away from the cornucopia, following a silvery cloud of sleek fish. Armed with harpoon-like tools and nets, Siris and Delta catch a handful fish with apparent ease. And Delta, even though she has been rather low-energy since her injury and doesn't move her right arm at all, manages remarkably well.

Blythe swims over after a while, and with a wicked grin remarks loudly, "_I'd_ like to see Eight try and catch some fish! We agreed to keep him as long as he pulled his weight around!"

"I'd like to see _you_ try and catch some fish," I mutter under my breath, but only Delta, who is closest, hears and she grins. The truth is, all of us, with the exception of the tributes from Four, are in no doubt complete crap at fishing, Blythe included.

But it has been clear that Blythe and I do not like each other...at all. So out of some kind of spite, I decided I needed to try. And who knows, maybe it would be one of those things that come to me naturally.

I'd been watching Siris and Delta long enough. I'd seen the technique. They all swim back and watch. Blythe smirks.

Net in hand, I wait for the cloud to calm enough so that here and there a fish would stray out of the pack. I wait. There one drifts by, curious, unaware - and I swing with the net. But I'm too slow and the fish darts away. The others laugh, Blythe more derisively. But I'm not done. I try again, this time, I creep forward even slower, closer and closer, move the net slowly. One fish comes by and noses the net curiously. I wait. The fish move around me and their fins even tickle my arms.

And then I swipe. Fish scatter, but one wriggling body remains, entangled in my net. Yes! I can't help myself but smile as I turn on the spot and show the others the fish. Blythe doesn't have anything to say. The others look impressed.

"Told you so," Siris says in an undertone to Delta, smirking.

Then the boom of the cannon echos through the arena. We all look at each other, and confusion is evident on the Career's faces. I usually attributed the death of a tribute to the Careers, traditionally the only ones who actively hunt down their competition. But they were all here. All except Ares.

"Back to the cornucopia," says Siris at once. And we obey. I follow them back, the three approaching without any caution. What did they have to fear, anyway? They were the hunters.

But when we reach cornucopia, it's deserted. Ares is no where to be found.

"Where do you think he..." begins Delta after a quick search confirmed that Ares wasn't inside the horn.

But then there's a shout and the four of us turn in time to see Ares appear from around mound of rock outside the circle of pedestals and swim towards us, waiving his cutlass.

"You sure missed it!" Ares booms with maniacal glee when he's closer. "She's been snooping around all morning. Waiting to see if we'd leave so she could get at the supplies...but I got her!"

So the cannon blast was Ares's doing. Another tribute down...how many more were there? I'd lost count.

"Who was it?" Blythe asks excitedly.

Ares shrugs. "The hell if I know. They all look the same, don't they?" He uses his gloved fingertips to polish the side of his sword with an indifference that sickened me. "But it doesn't matter, anyway," he continues, "she didn't put up much of a fight. Had a broken arm."

I feel my stomach lurch. _A broken arm..._It was Haddie, the girl from 12 who I pulled a rock off of what feels like eons ago.

I try by best to hide my horror, but the others aren't paying enough attention to me to notice.

"So who does that leave us with?" Delta asks, alert. "There can't be that many more."

We all look around at each other, try to remember.

"There's Glenn and Jasper," Siris says after a moment. "You know, from Ten. They're still out there somewhere."

"...And that boy," Blythe says, "the one with the tics from Six. I figured he'd be a sneaky one..."

We look at each other. "That's it?" I ask.

"That's it."

Now we avoid each other's eyes.

Three. Just three more. And then after that...what? We just turn on each other, try to kill one another? They aren't my friends, and they won't be, I know that. But I still couldn't imagine myself having to kill them. Not when I've seen them talk and eat and sleep and be in pain or laugh. And although I didn't like the idea, the Careers were too much like me, too human to even think about it. Razzle's death was so sudden I hadn't had time to think. But I know these people now. How could I possibly kill them? I wouldn't, couldn't.

But I would. I know I would. Because I need to survive.

I just hope that someone else will get to them first.

~.~

The following morning, the arena is frigidly cold. I wake with a start to numb fingers and raw cheeks. It is like the gamemakers have decided to turn the temperature nob way down over the night. To chill us. Freeze us. Make us feel uncomfortable. Remind us of where we are.

"Well, this is a turn of events." Siris comments, picking apart bits of fish from the day before with stiff fingers. The fish is raw, but better than nothing.

"Fancy dishes in the Capitol use raw fish all the time. It's a delicacy," Siris had told me. "You just need to know how to process it."

None of us complain. The fish is better than seaweed.

Delta has begun to look a little worse for wear. While the cold is manageable to the rest of us, her shoulder wound's so stiff she can barely move it, and she's pale with a purple tint to her lips. Bags stain the skin under her eyes from lack of sleep and, though she does a good job to hide it, is unsteady on her feet. How long will she last, I wonder? What will happen if she isn't able to care for herself anymore? I had a feeling that if it came to that, she wouldn't be seeing much help from the others. Not that she'd accept help, anyway. Now, when I try to help her, offer to get her something, she glares at me. Snaps at me, "I can do it myself!"

All the while the others ignore her predicament and carry on.

It got, if possible, even colder as the day wore on, and by nightfall I can't stop shaking. Our suits had been working fine up until now with insulating our heat. But with the water temperature so low, they can't stop the chill seeping in, the bits of exposed flesh turning pink and numb. We find some small heat packs, the kind that warm up with friction, and that helps warm our hands.

That night I try to sleep, but I can't stop shivering. If the temperature keeps dropping, we'd all freeze to death. What did the gamemakers want? Not for us to all freeze to death, surely. That isn't exciting enough.

Sometime during the night, when the moonlight shines cold and bright through the water outside the horn, I hear a noise. A slight tap on the surface of the horn above me. My eyes fly open. I stay stock still, ears straining. There it is again. I fumble for the hilt of my knife by my side and grip it tight. I turn my head slightly to the left. The others are still asleep. They never think to have someone keep watch. They are all to confident...all to cocky.

The intermittent taping turns suddenly into a scraping, like something sharp being drawn across the surface of the horn. Once, twice. My heart races. Siris suddenly sits bolt upright, and in a moment, the others are awake and alert.

"Something's on the horn," I hiss to them.

"Heard it," rumbles Ares.

"What is it?" whispers Delta.

We all wait in silence. But the noise has stopped.

"I'll go look," Blythe says undauntedly and stands up. We watch her pick her way towards the mouth, dagger in hand. No one says a word. The arena is eerily silent.

_This is wrong, this is a bad idea_, I think, but I'm frozen. I can't seem to bring myself to move, to open my mouth, and Blythe's already at the mouth, swimming out, turning on the spot to see the top of the horn.

We wait. I don't dare to breathe.

"Nothing's there," Blythe calls after an excruciating pause. She sounds annoyed. "For goodness sake, it was probably just some dumb fish-"

And that is when the spear lodges itself into the center of her chest.


	12. Chapter 12

~12~

The shock has barely registered on Blythe's face and the gasp has barely left her lips when the Careers jump up, weapons in hand, and launch themselves toward the mouth. I jump up, too. Despite the voice in my head screaming at me to back away and hide, I must not be seen hesitating. I must not look afraid.

"It's them!" Roars Ares. Them? The tributes from 10? It must be the tributes from 10.

Outside is a flurry of commotion. Black shapes dart in front of my vision, churning up the water. My mind is reeling. Other tributes attacking Careers? They must be desperate, hungry, freezing, or have gone completely insane. I spot the large girl - that's Glenn - with a feverish look in her eyes and a guttural scream echoing from her mouth. She looks crazy. She is utterly terrifying. She slashes at Siris and Ares with vicious-looking harpoons, and is holding her own longer than I could have thought possible. But how long would she last on her own like that?

My heart beats a mile a minute. But where is the other? The boy? Jasper?

"Behind you!" Delta hisses sharply, appearing in front of me with a spear in her hand. I spin around just in time to catch the sharp end of the boy's weapon with my knife hilt, keeping it from plunging into my back, but it grates off the edge and I gasp as a sharp pain erupts down my hand and arm, and blood, my blood, seeps into the water like dye. But I grit my teeth and throw my shoulder hard against him and he jumps back. There's a moment when he stares, wide-eyed at Delta and I, the battle raging on behind us. I think I can almost see the whites of his eyes. I think he almost decides to charge at us again. But behind us, Glenn is being overpowered and in another second, he turns tail and flees into the darkness.

"No! Get him!" Delta screams. And I'm so full of adrenaline that I don't even think about it. I dive after him. Delta tries to follow but speed is no longer on her side.

I pursue Jasper though the dark and streaks of moonlight. Pursue him for what feels like an eternity, my mind filled with an odd buzzing, my heart beating, blood streaming from the slice in my arm. I pursue him until I hear the cannon, and like it blasts right though me, my reeling mind swirls to a halt. Ahead of me, the terrified boy looks over his shoulder at me.

_What am I doing?_ I'm suddenly wondering. _Why am I chasing him?_ But then I notice something horribly familiar. Looming in front of us is a deep blackness, and I can see, though they are just creeping shadows, the deadly swaying seaweed, the spindly spider's legs that wave innocently, harmlessly.

I've chased him to the gorge.

I come to a halt but Jasper isn't stopping. He probably doesn't know. Probably thinks that he can hide in that darkness. Doesn't know that the seaweed would snatch him up and drag him down into the watery depths.

"S-stop!" I gasp, only now realizing how out of breath I really am, how the cold seizes my lungs and squeezes. "Don't go in there!"

His head swivels around again, his face, scared, white... He won't listen to me. Why would he? As far as he knows I'm trying to trick him. That I am just another malicious Career tribute. What he doesn't know and likely will never know is that I have no intention of hurting him at all. I never wanted to hurt anyone.

I can't reach him in time. He doesn't stop. And he's looking back at me so he doesn't see the creeping arms of seaweed reaching for him, wrapping around his ankles and wrists. But when he does it's too late. He lets out a terrible scream, thrashes wildly, but the more he flails the sooner he's swallowed by the deathly darkness. Pulled into its depths and into silence.

I just float there for a moment in a kind of daze, like my mind and body haven't really registered what's happened. Then I turn around, automatically, in the direction of the cornucopia, and I hear the second canon fire. I'm sure the canon belonged to Jasper, but I couldn't be sure. The first one must have been Glenn. Or maybe it had been Blythe, or maybe the second was Blythe or Glenn someone else entirely.

But I had a hunch that the Careers were all still alive. Alive and waiting for their next battle...itchy with anticipation with the finale so near.

But then I think, what if I just don't go back? If my hunch is right, then there is just one other tribute left: that boy from 6. If I flee now I won't have to be there when the Careers start hunting each other. They all must have heard the cannon fire, but they won't necessarily know which one of us had died. I could slip away, escape, hide out and wait for them to finish each other off. The idea is sorely tempting. I almost do it.

But they'll know, the moment the faces appear in the sky. They'll know that I ran off, broke the alliance before it was officially dissolved. Then I'd be their very first target. They'd hunt me first. If I go back now, maybe I'd spare some time for myself. Enough time to possibly think of another plan.

So I swim back. I'm not sure how long it takes. I just go though the motions numbly without noticing my surroundings. When the cornucopia looms into view all seems still. For one heart-stopping moment I think it's empty, but then I see the shadow and short blond hair of Siris at the mouth. I approach cautiously, but no one even notices. And I soon see why.

Blythe is still alive.

I alight on the edge of the mouth, breathing hard. Siris, Delta and Ares are gathered around Blythe who lies on the floor, her head resting in Delta's lap.

But...she is no longer the Blythe I know and hate. This Blythe whimpers. This Blythe is not killer but just a frightened teenager...just like me.

"I-I want to go home," comes her weak, mousy voice. Tears are welling up in her goggles. "I j-just want..."

"I know," Delta is stone-faced, but one absent-minded hand strokes Blythe's short hair.

"Why is it taking so long?" Demands Ares, scowling. "Why isn't the wound killing her?"

"It is," says Delta.

"But she's..." The closest thing to concern I've ever seen on Ares's face knits his eyebrows together. He doesn't finish his sentence, but we all know what he means. Blythe is suffering. A lot. The merciful thing would be to just put her out of her misery, because however that spear pierced her, it's killing her too slowly. Too painfully. And even the most bloodthirsty killer among us wouldn't want to watch her like this. At least, I hope they wouldn't...

"Enough of this," Siris steps forward. "I don't want to watch this." He slowly kneels down by Blythe's side and says softly, "Blythe, can you hear me? Blythe, I'm going to stop the pain, okay?"

Blythe's eyes shimmer and she chokes a little. Blood leaks from the corners of her lips. The others are like stone statues as Siris takes out his knife.

And I turn away.

I don't want to see.

~.~

I had hoped the cold would have let up, but it doesn't. The Capitol is never, ever satisfied.

The next day none of us speak to one another, but the tension is there. We all feel it closing in on us slowly, like moving walls. The finale is near. The end is near. Soon, these allies will be my enemies once more. Soon, I will most likely be dead. As much as I want to avoid thinking about it, there is really no way I can stand up against an experienced killer like Siris. Siris is smart. Siris will probably win this in the end.

They're getting restless. I notice it most in Ares who already has a tendency to be short-tempered. That and we've had to ration food supplies again.

"I get it," Delta had said bitterly after a morning of hunting for schools of fish but finding none. "Get us used to the comfort of food, but then cut it off. Starve us. Make us hostile...like we don't have any other crap to deal with."

Her shoulder wound has gotten no better as far as I know - she keeps it wrapped tightly all the time. It's obvious that it still pains her but no sponsors have come to her aid. In fact, it is curious how I have not seen a single package from a sponsor at all. And Careers are the ones who are supposed to get all the aid. The odds are, after all, most in their favor.

My own wound isn't faring too well. I'd managed to sew it up the same way that I did Delta's, but there is nothing I can do for it now but clean it with the few drops of alcohol there are left and wrap it up. It's long and deep down my forearm, and it wouldn't stop bleeding for the longest time. I leaves me feeling weak. My arm aches. My head aches. At one point I stop feeling the cold of the water and I know I must have some kind of fever. I don't know if it is from my new wound or my old wounds or the stress or what, but I know have to grit my teeth and hide it from my allies, just like Delta has been doing.

I begin to notice time passing strangely. The afternoon drags on...or are they multiple afternoons? Nothing changes but the food supply dwindling out of existence. Everyone is on edge. Helpless, agitated.

Just like the gamemakers want.

Were they holding back the sponsor's supplies in the little parachutes as well? I wouldn't be surprised.

An afternoon, I'm not sure which, we all swim to the bottom to scavenge for any of that edible purple seaweed. We hunt for what feels like hours, but like the fish, the seaweed seems to have disappeared, too.

"The gamemakers," Siris remarks slowly when we regroup at the cornucopia pillar on the ocean floor, closing his eyes with an almost-weariness, "Seem to be in quite a hurry to get us to kill each other."

We all look at each other, but no one denies it. Then Delta suddenly dives for something silvery in the sand.

"Look," she says, eyes widening. And she holds up the object. It isn't a parachute, but it is obvious that it is a gift from a sponsor, in the form of a metal capsule with a small buoy attached to the top that would let it sink, but slow enough for someone to catch it. For a moment we're all excited, but then the feeling is gone. The capsule lid hangs open. It's empty, whatever was in it taken out. What is even more disconcerting is that, with a shout, Ares pulls another empty capsule out of the sand, and in a moment, a third is discovered.

"_Someone_," Ares growls with a heavy weight on the word, "has been stealing them."

"You can be damn sure it wasn't any of us," Delta says eyes narrowed. "And you'd think we'd notice them float by?"

"Unless they were intercepted before they even passed us by," I say. "Like near the surface."

We all automatically look up towards the murky false-sunlight rippling above us. Uneasiness grows in my gut.

"It's him, isn't it," says Delta.

Our silence confirms it. It's the boy from Six. The last one to kill before the finale, when alliance breaks up. And I die.

"So he's near," Ares says with a malicious grin.

"He could even be here right now," Siris says suddenly. "With the cornucopia empty and unguarded. He could be there right now."

We all look up again.

"No," Delta says confidently. "No one would be that stu-"

But her sentence is cut short when we all see the flash of black dart out from the mouth of the cornucopia and shoot away.

Ares roars. "That little thieving-'"

"-He's got last of our food!" Delta cries. "We gotta go! This is our chance to get him!"

Without a moment's hesitation, they lurch into the chase, I, a little farther behind, but following. _Chasing_, I think. _Always chasing_.

At first we think we've lost him, but with a shout, Delta points to his silhouette rippling across the rocks a ways in front and a bit below us.

Delta's somehow found a new burst of energy because she rockets along in front of all of us with the speed she had before her injury, eager, it seems, to get the games rolling.

My head pounds. Why can't I seem to see straight? I'm using all my energy to keep up with the others, arms stroking, legs kicking to almost a rhythm. It fills my body, my head. _I want this to be over, oh, why can't it all be over? I don't know how much longer I can do this._

We're in a part of the arena I've never seen before. A wide pyramidal mountain lays at level with us and looms towards us as we chase the black, faceless shadow of the boy from Six. It rises dark and ominous, with a steady stream of what looks like bubbly water issuing from the mouth. And I notice suddenly, that it is not nearly as cold here as it is at the cornucopia. The water spewing from the mouth must be heated...It has to be some kind of geyser, it has to be some kind of hot, underwater...

Volcano.

Oh no. Oh god no.

And because this is the exact kind of thing the gamemakers do, I'm not surprised at all when the world around us starts trembling, shaking violently, threatening to tear us all apart. The mountain is going to explode. Right now.

"Delta!" I scream but I don't think anyone can hear me.

Delta's swimming right towards it. The boy from Six is no where to be seen. Ares and Siris slow up and look wildly around. Panic is instant. I think Siris begins to turn back around and shout something else, maybe to Delta, maybe to Ares or me, but it's lost in the sudden, gut-wrenching explosion as the mountain splits open and we are all blasted back by a wall of boiling, frothing water. I'm flung backward, the water hitting me like a giant fist in my chest, tumbling me ruthlessly through empty space until my body slams hard into rock. And there's a moment where I gasp painfully, my head screaming, and I think, I'm still alive? I must be still alive? And then I roll away into seeping blackness.

**A/N:** Hello, if you are enjoying this story, (you are on chapter 12, that is saying something) let me know in that little box below, I'd appreciate it!

TTE


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: **Here it is, the SECOND TO LAST CHAPTER. I can't control my excitement. SO MUCH EXCITEMENT.  
How excited are you? Let me know in the little box at the bottom!  
And you can look for the last installment in about a week, maybe less :)  
Enjoy!

TTE

* * *

~13~

I wake in a ringing silence. I'm lying crookedly, my back against the rough surface of rock. My eyelids are heavy and my vision is blurred. When I try to lift my head it's like lead, and splitting with white hot pain. I lay there disoriented, try to remember where I am or where I had been or who I am or what I had been doing before I awoke on this half-concealed little shelf of rock. I lay and breathe and try to remember.

My name is Tom.

I live in District 8.

I am in the Hunger Games...

The explosion - I remember now. And Delta, Siris and Ares. That last boy from 6. Who survived it? I did, somehow... Would they be looking for me? Is the alliance over?

I try to sit up, but it just brings on a wave of nausea and I have to struggle with my mask to pull it free in time before I vomit. I heave on my side until the nausea fades and I roll onto my back once more. My whole body is in pain. My shoulder feels dislocated. There's a shooting pain down my leg that starts at my hip and every muscle screams in protest of any movement.

I sincerely hope I don't have to fight anyone. Right now, I am a sitting target. If they found me, I wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight.

But maybe they were in the same state? Weak? Immobile? They were all as close as I was to the blast, if not closer.

I lay there for a long time, afraid to move and discover what other damages have been done to my body. After what feels like hours, the ringing in my ears starts to fade, and I start to hear other noises: the constant airy sound of moving water, a low, monotone rumbling that starts up somewhere in the distance and...a murmur. No, two murmurs, two voices. My heart races, my ears strain. Slowly, I roll onto my side again, pull myself with my good arm towards the edge, peer around rock - and there - I see him. Siris, bruised and bloodied, with a purple bruise discoloring half his face. And near him, I see the broad back and thick neck of Ares. They're talking. It's faint but I can make out most of the words.

"Six?" Ares is saying.

"Got him," Siris says. "No sign of Tom?"

"Haven't seen him. Blast probably got him, too."

"How many cannons did you hear?"

"Just that one: Six's. But there could have been more. The blast was too loud."

There's a pause.

"I didn't even hear Delta's," Siris says.

Ares makes some indiscernible noise. "But we all saw it."

Another pause.

I think about calling out to them, and I almost do, but then a gruff voice in the back of my head, one that sounds uncannily like Zeb's, tells me to keep quiet. Six is dead. Delta is dead. It is just me, Siris and Ares left.

They are no longer my allies, and it is probably for the best that they think I am dead for the time being.

I give my head a little shake, and the pain and nausea this time is more manageable. I can't stay on this ledge. I'm sure they'd find me. I look around. There seems to be some kind of dark, gaping hole in the rock to my left. A cave? A cave is better than a ledge. I make up my mind and begin to crawl clumsily towards it.

Then I hear Ares's voice again and I freeze, listening.

"So...what happens now?" He asks Siris.

Pause.

I can't see their faces anymore.

"Well, this is it, now, isn't it," says Siris.

"What?"

"The finale, Ares."

"Just...us two, then?"

Pause.

"The alliance is over," comes Siris's voice.

Pause.

And then Ares voice, louder than before, drifts over to me through the water, and it's full of a strange glee: "I've sure been waiting for this!"

And then I hear sounds of battle, and without hesitation, pull myself as fast I can toward the cave. I reach the mouth...it looks deep. Perfect. I grip the sides and slide myself in feet first and slowly crawl backwards, deeper and deeper - as far as it would go. And I wait, heart pounding.

Wait.

Eerie sounds of fighting drift into the cave.

I wait.

Finally, the rumble of the cannon. Siris, Ares?

I wait.

And then comes a sound more frightening than anything I've heard in the arena. Echoing like howling wind into the cave, haunting, blood-chilling: my name.

"Tooooooooom." It's Siris's voice. So Siris killed Ares. And Siris must know, now, that I am still alive. "Tooooooom, where are you hiding?"

I imagine Siris, turning on the spot, diluted blood floating pink around him, eyes crazed, jaw slack. Completely mad.

"Tooooooom, come out to plaaaay." His voice is like one you'd hear in a nightmare. "I know you're here, Tom. I wouldn't still be here if you weren't still alive."

Is his voice getting louder? I swear. He's going to find me. He's going to find me and he's going to kill me.

I back farther into the cave. Farther. Maybe this cave will just go on forever and I'll never have to confront him. Farther. My foot hits rock wall and I push myself up straight so my back will be against the rock wall, the end, my death...except...there isn't a wall, and all I get is a glimpse of bright, white light before I'm falling - quite rapidly - faster than I ever did in water before - backwards into empty space.

~.~

_The Official Gamemaker Control Room, City Center Hall, 17:12_

"Um, excuse me, sir."

The ratings had sky-rocketed. This is what the Head Gamemaker had trained for, and he couldn't be more in his element. And he couldn't be less in the mood to be interrupted.

"Sir." The small balding man with weak, watery eyes stands tentatively by his shoulder.

"Not now, we're tracking Siris. Just a little farther...that's it...annnnd cue hovercraft to pick up Ares... Focus on Siris now, good. Get a camera going to locate-"

"Sir!"

The Head Gamemaker turns on the small man. "What is it, for goodness sake, it's the finale! The busiest moment of the games!"

"Um, well, we uh..." The man looks nervously down at his control panel. "We seem to not be able to locate tribute 8-A... Tom Annic, sir."

"What do you mean you can't _locate_ him?"

"Well uh,...sir, he seems to have disappeared..."

The Head Gamemaker rolls his eyes. He doesn't have time for this. "Well, pinpoint his tracker, idiot! That's what they're there for!"

"It...it stopped sending out signals about two and a half minutes ago, s-sir..." the man replies nervously.

"Well, did the blast destroy him?"

"We...don't know...sir."

"Did he flatline?"

"No sir, it just...just stopped... Stopped reading his vitals," The man points to his panel where an image of tribute 8-A appears and underneath, where location, heart rate, temperature and other vitals usually appear, is instead an empty screen, no sign of flatlining or cooling body temperature.

The Head Gamemaker stares at the screen. A hush falls over the control room. On the screens above their heads, Siris stalks the rock face, calling eerily: "Toooooooom."

"So," the Head Gamemaker says slowly, with a deathly calm. "Where. Is. He."

"Sir," a young woman piped up from across the room, "the last footage of him was from cameras 3688 and 3689. In sector y-8. In a cave, sir."

"Show me - but keep that broadcast on Siris now, good."

The Head Gamemaker watches on a smaller side screen, the boy back into the darkness of the cave, farther, farther, and then, as the camera shifts to follow him, a bright white square of light appears behind him, and in a moment, with a collective gasp from the gamemakers, the boy falls backwards through the hole and disappears. The Head Gamemaker begins to sweat.

"What is_ that_?!" he demands. But no one answers. "_What is it?!"_

Silence.

"It appears...to be a hole, sir," one of them finally replies, tapping away on her control panel.

"In _what, _exactly?"

"...In the primary perimeter, sir." The women confers with her neighbors. "We...think he must have fallen through and...and is somewhere between the primary and secondary perimeters, sir. The trackers were only designed to admit signal within the boarders of the arena."

"Has this ever happened before?"

"No, sir, we've never had to deal with a double-perimeter arena before, and the architects are always vigilant about errors like this, but.."

"But..._What?_"

The gamemakers look each other but none speak up.

"Who is responsible for this?" the Head Gamemaker demands, losing most of his calm. "Which one of you sloppy, brain-dead idiots is responsible for the fact that we just lost our running-up tribute out a _hole in the perimeter?"_

No one speaks. Because the person at fault knows exactly what kind of punishment would be in store for them. And the Head Gamemaker knows that he would get equal blame if this fiasco wasn't sorted out soon. More than his job would be at stake.

"Sir," says the gamemaker with the spiked blue hair. "I'm getting complains."

"Okay. Ideas," the Head Gamemaker paces nervously around the assembled gamemakers. "Can we lure him out?"

"Um, no, sir, none our creations can operate outside of the arena."

"So, what are our options right now?"

"Well, sir, we can't get him out through the system. The only option available right now is to initiate the SGF."

"...You mean...go in there?"

"Yes. Take him out manually, sir."

"You know what that means, of course," the Head Gamemaker's slit-eyed assistant advisor speaks up. "We have to go off air."

The Head Gamemaker nearly chokes on the air. "Out of the question!"

"It's that," she says slyly, "or admit that some blockhead under your jurisdiction made a very compromising error that has jeopardized the entire games."

Everyone watches the Head Gamemaker. On screen, Siris slowly turns on the spot like a strange, possessed dancer.

"...Can it be done?" He asks finally.

"It has to be," says his assistant adviser.

"How long will it be?"

"Forty minutes or less, sir."

"That's too long! The entire nation is watching, for goodness sake!"

"We cant risk any of the cameras catching sight of the team...it would cause pandemonium, sir. People would begin to suspect fowl play...that we're tampering with the outcome. It is the only quick solution."

Silence.

The Head Gamemaker takes a deep breath. "Do it."

"Sir? What would you have the team do once they've extracted him?"

The Head Gamemaker rubs at his temple. "Kill him," he says, turning away. "We've already got our victor."

~.~

It's not a far drop, and I instantly smack into smooth cold floor with a groan. I cough and taste blood. I keep my eyes tight shut until the waves of pain rolling through my body subside. And then I notice the strangest thing... I feel_ wet. _Water drips off my hair and suit, and I feel a _breeze. _My eyes fly open.

I'm not underwater anymore. I'm in some sort of narrow room with a ceiling I can't make out and just two white walls that keep going and going and curve into the distance. Everything is blinding white, undefined, empty. It is like...almost like I have fallen into a part of the arena that has never been designed. This kind of thing has never happened before. I have never seen this kind of thing in any of the previous games. I wonder if Siris will follow me here... I wonder if there are even any cameras here to watch me.

With another groan I roll over and push myself up into a kneeling position. My head spins, but I can manage it. Before me, on the inner wall, the nondescript white is broken by a square of dark glass at about eye-level to me, and I can see rocks and a small chink of light beyond. No...not glass at all. I reach out to the window, tentatively let my finger touch it - and it slips right through - into the cold ocean water of the arena. I draw my hand back quickly. The white wall around the hole hums when I get near it, and I recognize the sound from the fences back home. This wall is humming with electrical current. That at least is familiar: arena perimeters are often made of some kind of electrical force field. I hobble on my hands and knees the few steps to the outside wall. This one is different. It doesn't hum, and when I cautiously prod it with my rubber-tipped glove, it's solid, like hard plastic.

What is on the other side of _this_ wall, I wonder?

I look back at the hole. They won't let me be in here forever. Someone or something would come for me soon.

So I make up my mind. Pulling myself up against the outer wall, I pull off my flippered shoes and throw them aside - they were nearly impossible to walk in - and I pull off my mask. Real, sweet air fills my lungs and I almost smile, rubbing at my face and hair, pulling off my goggles. It felt good not to wear them...and I never thought that I'd have that chance again.

I begin to pull myself along the wall, moving slowly away from the hole. The narrow alley-like passage between the walls seems endless, but the farther away I get from the hole the better.

Walking on my feet feels strange...and it also hurts. I keep walking but the white walls go on and on. Did this go around the entire arena? I could just keep walking around in this big circle. Walk around for eternity until I die...it occurs to me that this should scare me but I feel oddly calm. Maybe it is the complete lack of _anything_ in this place that makes it seem more like a dream than reality.

I walk and walk, not caring if I got anywhere, just that I kept moving. Maybe because I am afraid of being found. Maybe I am just afraid of stopping...

And then my moment of peace is broken when I hear the sharp _click_ and whir of a weapon charging. I spin around and just manage to drop to the ground in time to dodge the cannonball of what looks like bright blue fire that hurtles over my head and explodes against the wall above me. Chunks of molten wall splatter the back of my suit and I can feel the burn, but I'm already scrambling to my feet and hurtling down the passage, all pain forgotten, adrenaline pushing me forward. There are three of them, clad in white with black-faced helmets, two of them seem to have normal guns: bullets splatter across the outside wall, the ones that hit the electrified perimeter ricochet in every direction...the third shoots the blue fire that explodes against the wall, blasting melting chunks from it. I run as fast as I can, but my pursuers are in much better condition. Much faster. Better trained. I gasp and stumble when I feel a bullet hit my heel, then another in my thigh, and then in my shoulder and upper arm. And I fall over with gasps of pain, my whole body trembling, and in flashes of blue I cover my head and the wall explodes beside me and I know I'm dead. They're going to kill me. This is the end.

But in the smoking wall I see a glimpse of yellow light... A hole? There's another hole! They've blasted right through the outer wall! I seize my chance and dive toward it - it's just big enough to worm my shoulders through - and like some kind of weird fish, I wriggle myself through and tumble into hot sand, sunlight, blue sky...the outside...I'd made it outside the arena...

I gasp on my side, every inch of me screaming, until I hear more gunshots and know I need to move. Half-conscious, I stumble to my feet and half-limp, half-run into the flat expanse of what feels and looks like desert, and behind me, the massive, stadium-like arena rises like a threatening mountain. And I am completely out of my mind as I stumble blindly and bare-footed over the sand and stone, and I hear people chasing me, guns firing, the sound of a hovercraft moaning above me, getting louder and louder as it gets closer, and I've come to the end of my strength, and I know it because my legs collapse underneath me and I fall on my arms hard, and my head drops into the warm sand and I lay there with my chest rapidly rising and falling and my heart beating like it wants to escape. _The sand...it's so soft, like a pillow..._ is my last, hazy thought before I pass out.

~.~

When I wake, it's like I am being pulled slowly out from deep water. Deep dark, murky water like in the arena. I feel like I have been sleeping for months...years...every inch of me aching with dull pain...

My eyes snap open. I'm lying on a narrow hospital bed in a bright, featureless room. A small box on a tripod with wires snaking out from it and taped to my arm beeps like the tick of a clock.

Beep. Beep. Beep. My heart, beating. So I am still alive...but how? Those Capitol gunmen seemed pretty bent on killing me.

I slowly turn my head on the soft pillow, squinting in the florescent lights that make my eyes ache. There's a woman I've never seen before sitting calmly by the side of my bed, looking intently at me. She's middle-aged with dark, military-style hair, a plain gray uniform. Is she from the Capitol? Am I in the Capitol? Where am I? Why aren't I dead yet? I should be dead... I try to move my arms, my legs, but I soon realize I'm strapped down. This suddenly sets me off and I begin to panic, squirming on the bed.

"Tom - Tom," the woman stands and she places a soft hand soothingly on my shoulder. "Tom, it's alright, you're safe. These are just here to keep you from hurting yourself, it's okay..."

I stare at her, wide-eyed. I feel vulnerable, like prey. I want to cringe away from her touch, but as the kind-looking woman gently strokes my arm it starts to have a calming effect. This woman seems genuine, motherly. I miss that kind of person...

I open my mouth, let air escape... My throat is like sand but I manage the dry, hoarse words:

"Where...where...am I?"

The woman steps back, smiles sympathetically at me. I watch her mouth form the words: "You're in District Thirteen."

I stare at her, sure I heard her wrong. "District Thirteen?" I say in my hoarse whisper. "But...how? Thirteen is...it's not..."

"It's still here," she says. "And we've been placing concealed hovercrafts at the Hunger Games arenas for several years now. Keeping an eye on things, you know. Waiting in case someone...someone like you needs our help..."

I'm having a hard time taking this in. Maybe it has to do with the gauzy bandage wrapped tight around my head... So that hovercraft wasn't the Capitol's, it was District 's, a district that was supposed to be a pile of radioactive rubble...and they had picked me up. The whole thing seems hard to believe, even for me with my foggy brain. This woman could easily be lying, couldn't she...she...she could still be my enemy...but then again, if it had really been the Capitol that picked me up, I would surely be dead by now, not lying comfortably, covered with white bandages. They would have killed me, wouldn't they? Because...all because I had escaped the arena...Oh god what kind of mayhem must be going on in the Capitol? A tribute managing to escape the arena...It's unheard of...

Which brought to mind another question.

"How did I...why was I even able to escape?" I ask.

"You weren't supposed to live, of course," she answers grimly. "The Capitol is very vigilant about covering things up when they go wrong."

"What do you mean, "cover things up"? What's happened? Are they...are they still looking for me?"

She looks down. There's a pause. "Maybe...I should show you something... Excuse me." She stands and leaves the room through a glass door and is gone for a few minutes. In that time I stare at the spot she had left and listen to the sound of my heart monitor beep. Beep. Beep. Other, darker thoughts lay, threatening, in wait somewhere in the back of my mind, but for now I'm glad they are dormant.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

When she comes back, she's holding a thin, portable screen. She touches the surface, it lights up and she shows it to me. "This is what they broadcasted shortly after we picked you up," she explains.

For a minute, all I see is the Capitol emblem against a royal purple background, but then it cuts to footage of Siris, looking around wildly, confused, like a trapped animal. And then I hear Claudius Templesmith's voice issue from the speaker, "Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the victor of the Fifty-Eighth Hunger Games, Siris Myre! I give you- the tribute of District Four!" And then there's a close-up of Siris looking shocked, turning slowly on the spot, and it's not until the ladder shoots down to collect him that relief spreads across his face.

I look up, confused. "So...all of Panem thinks I am dead...and Siris was crowned victor...what was there to cover up? No one knows anything went wrong."

"The problem...is that they _do_ know something went wrong," she replies seriously, laying the screen down on the bed, "because when they went in to drive you out of you're little hide-out, the Games went off air."

"_What?_"

She nods. "That's what that Capitol emblem was. For approximately twenty-eight minutes, that's what the world was seeing. You can imagine the confusion. In the end, the Capitol explained that it was a signal transmission error and they were terribly sorry and the Games would be back up and running as soon as possible, picking up where it left off. That is when they showed some old footage of you hitting your head against the rocks and made that seem like that had killed you. But, as you can imagine, it wasn't completely convincing. And, as you can imagine, the Capitol is not too happy with the gamemakers who made the call, and I suspect they won't be seen around much longer.

"So," she continues, "to answer your earlier question, yes, they are still looking for you, and if they ever find you they are going to kill you without hesitation. You escaped, Tom. In their eyes, you committed the ultimate form of defiance. And worst of all, you managed to escape _alive_. And the Capitol is not very kind to those who don't die when they are supposed to."

_The ultimate form of defiance. _I never even thought about that. I was just trying to survive...

"So, what happens to me now?" I ask.

"Ah," and she almost smiles. "That's something that we need to discuss. You are welcome - or maybe _obliged_ is a more appropriate word - to stay here in District Thirteen. You understand, I trust," she adds softly, delicately, "That, in your situation, you cannot return to District Eight."

She watches my reaction closely, sympathetically. I try to take in all she's told me._ The Capitol wants me dead...and I can never go back home again? I can't? But... _It takes a minute for my common sense to pull itself out from the confines of my ravaged body -going back home would be the kind of thing they'd be waiting for, anticipating that I might show back up there, and they'd be ready to kill me...ready to kill all of my family in order to keep their blunder a secret... My heart clenches. My family - Kearsey - her family, everyone... I can never see them again, it would put them in too much danger..._And they think I'm dead...oh god everyone thinks I'm dead..._ I clench my jaw, turn my head back towards the wall. Try not to imagine my family, Kearsey, and their mourning...

"So, I have to spend the rest of my life...confined here?" I say through my teeth. It occurs to me that I don't even know where "here" is...

"Not exactly," she says lightly. "That's the other thing we need to discuss. You should know...we've been watching you, Tom, in the Games. You're smart, compassionate, trustworthy - an ideal candidate, and - I'm sorry if this comes off as being sudden, but now that you're here...well, we were hoping you might be interested in...in helping us with a...certain undertaking..."

For a moment I lay in silence, not looking at her but staring at the blank wall. But after hanging in that silence, I can't help myself and I ask, "What kind of undertaking?"

There's a pause. I can't see her face, but I hear her words clearly:

"A revolution."

That's got my attention. I turn toward her again. "Against the Capitol?"

"Yes."

And I almost smile. Maybe it's my blooming apathy for my own well-being or the fact that the arena might have driven me completely insane, but I like the sound of that.

"You'd be trained. In District Thirteen, everyone is trained, but we've been formulating a specific job for you that would fit your talents. You'd be put on the "field", so to speak. You'd be a vital part of the movement. A necessity. You'd have to go through an intensive reconstruction, you understand, for yours and others' safety. You'd need a new face, and a new name - but that's only a small part." She stands.

"You're smart, Tom. And I'm sure you understand...it should be clear to you now...that Tom Annic as you knew and were... is dead, one way or another." She walks towards the door. "We're not asking for any commitment yet - you're in no shape for that and the most important thing for you to do now is rest, but I hope you will consider the offer. You have plenty of time to decide."

She leaves me alone then. Alone in the white room with my heart beeping, beeping, beeping. I lay without moving, staring at the jumping beats write themselves on the little screen, and now more than ever, I long to go home, to have things go back to the way they were, back when I was a Tom Annic that had never been in an arena, had never experienced murder at the hands of peers, that didn't have nightmares every night, back when the Capitol did not know my name and could care less what I did with my life... I wish, I wish, but I know. I know that there's no going back.

The woman is right.

Tom Annic is dead. He was dead the moment his name was called at the reaping. And now I am left, an empty shell of him.

_A revolution..._a weighted word...but I felt excitement just thinking about it. Just imagining what it would be like to be part of something...like that. Imagining what it would be like to live in a nation without Hunger Games, with no more senseless murders for the enjoyment of an audience, no more people like Esther, doomed to die, and no more people like me, shells of human beings left for dead...or with crowns placed on their heads, feigning ill-gotten glory... What am I anyway? Who have I become? This part of me that is still living...what am I to do with it? What am I to do?

_You'd need a new face, and a new name - but that's only a small part... _The woman had said.

Maybe...

Maybe that is exactly what I need


	14. Chapter 14

_~14~_

_~16 Years Later~_

The gold-line train glides noiselessly into the station at seven o'clock to the second, as it did yesterday and all the days before. I file along with others into the nearest car, tapping my identification badge on the green-glowing sensor and walk down the car until I find an empty seat by a window. There are more civilians taking the train than usual, but it's always like this after Reaping Day.

All around me, the people of the Capitol are donned in their finest, radiant hues, and they chatter with unfaltering excitement. It becomes a buzzing in the back of my mind, but I still know exactly what they are talking about. The Hunger Games, the fresh crop of tributes, the opening ceremonies that people camp out to snag tickets for, arrive days in advance, all the wile bursting with excitement.

This was all overwhelming to me at first, of course - anyone who wasn't raised in the Capitol would find it overwhelming - but I've had time to get used to it. It's amazing what you can get used to.

The train slides out of the station and speeds toward the City Center, A bright, shinning metropolis rising in the distance.

And I remember the very first time I'd seen it - though for the life of me I'd wish I'd forget - when I was sixteen years old. A lifetime ago...a different life...It's impossible not to think about it, especially during Games season, with t.v. screens pointing at me from every direction, every minute of every day. Olivine's is the only place I can escape them in the Capitol.

Olivine - that's who District 13 sent me to for my final training, and, more importantly, for my remaking. Olivine, a tiny old lady with bright, slanting eyes, and wispy curls of hair dyed pale green - she was once a stylist for the Capitol. But she was also one of the few Capitol citizens who could see through the glamor and glorification of the Games to the horror underneath. She'd attained contact with District 13 and, since her retirement, has been secretly receiving and training District 13 agents at her unassuming apartment and beauty-shop in the far eastern quarter of the city.

But before that were the ten years...the ten long years that I spent in District 13, enveloped into their strict but sustainable society. It took a while before they'd let me out of the hospital - Dr. Aurelius always had a lot to say about my mental stability, my ability to interact with people like a normal human being, but after months and months of several different types of therapy, I was discharged and trained and schooled along with other people my age.

It took a while to get used to the staring, the comments. Most people there have never seen the Hunger Games - few are allowed access to the footage - but they all knew about them and they all knew who I was and what I'd done... But despite all that they were surprisingly accepting. I wasn't the first - I was the first arena escapee, but there were quite a few other enemies of the Capitol that had sought refuge in 13. I'd met many of them. Became close friends with them.

In 13, everything was so strictly regimented that it was easy to lose myself in my daily tasks. I'd made a habit on focusing on my work...maybe a bit too obsessively, but enough that I could go days, weeks, without a single harrowing memory...but they'd always come back...there would always be reminders, triggers...a girl with long blond curls...or a pair of translucent gray eyes...

And that's when Dr. Aurelius would find me, back in my old spot: curled into the worn chair in the corner of his office...

But as the years passed the relapses became less and less frequent. Then, I stopped having them entirely.

It was six years ago now that a hovercraft took me in the dead of night to the Capitol and I'd first met Olivine.

"I didn't believe them when they told me about you," was the first thing she had said to me in her aged, squeaky voice, looking up at me and clasping my hands in hers. "But here you are, alive. And you look just like you did, then, too. What a miracle..."

"Of course," she had added later, that first morning when I'd woken up and we'd sat down to an elegant Capitol breakfast that made my mouth water, "you can't go walking around looking like that, you'll be recognized. I've already made arrangements for your remake, and then once you've settled in to your new appearance we can really get down to business... But you already know this, I'm sure."

"Yes," I had said. "Yes, that was one of the requirements for the job."

Olivine's eyes glowed with excitement.

Later, I remember standing in the back room of Olivine's shop, and pulling off that last bandage from my altered nose - a last minute idea of Olivine's - and just standing there and staring at myself in her floor-length mirror for what could have been hours. A complete stranger faced me in that mirror, but it was a person I now had to embrace as me, the new me. The structure of my face had been altered by surgery - not a lot but just enough. I'd gone through several sessions of pigment-therapy where they lightened my skin, eliminating my freckles. Olivine had dyed my hair a dark brown, cut it close to my head, and she'd changed the color of my eyes.

"Do you have to change my eye color?" I had asked Olivine the first week. "Is anyone really going to recognize me by my eyes?"

Olivine studded me. At that point, she had already started calling me by my new name, and she said it then, with a sigh and a knowing tone. She was very sharp, sometimes it was almost scary. "...What's the _real_ reason you want to keep you're eye color?"

I didn't want to tell her the real reason. The reason that, my eyes, that light shade of blue...it was all I had left of home...of Kearsey. They were Kearsey's eyes too. The exact shade... Kearsey, who, once, I saw during a District 8 Reaping on Olivine's one, mandatory television. Saw her in the background standing with the adults, with the same blond curls, same worried, knitted eyebrows. It was just a flash of her, but I could have sworn I saw a small child -maybe two or three - holding tight to her skirts, a tall man who I couldn't identify, arm wrapped comfortingly around her shoulders...

I'd lost so much already, I'd even lost my token, the marble, somewhere between the arena and 13...and I didn't want to loose this too... And that was what I finally told Olivine. Her wrinkled face had turned to weary sympathy, but she slowly shook her head and said softly, "I'm sorry, dear, but we can't take any chances."

But in the end, she compromised, and now the eyes that look back at me in the mirror - they are the warm green with the light gold flecks of my token, my last, lost gift from home.

And that day, watching this new being in the mirror, something broke in me. Everything came flooding in with a fire. Everyone I'd lost and could never see... My little, perfect brother Paisley, who's face I can no longer remember. My parents, alone in their small, empty tenement, Kearsey...strong, beautiful Kearsey, working long hours into the night to feed her family, Jean, my oldest, closest friend, Esther, the kind of person never meant to win the Games, who I once caught, singing a lullaby in a dark hallway... Zeb who I had hated with a passion but now realized how similar we really were... and all those kids...all those hundreds of kids I had watch die over my lifetime...watch die before my eyes - Razzle, Blythe, Haddie, Delta, all of them... All of their faces swim before me, tear at me from the inside, and I couldn't remember how I got there, but when Olivine found me I was curled in a fetal position against boxes of hair products, rocking back and forth, head buried in my hands, shaking, sobbing...

But that was a long time ago now...

And Tom Annic has been dead for a long time...

I feel the train start to slow as we pull into the City Center station, and around me, people crowd towards the sliding doors. There's a mob at the station, people clamoring to catch a glimpse of the each tribute train as they pull in every so often - and I worm my way though the crowd, off the train and head for the great, glass-paneled building that towers over the station.

I used to be paranoid about people recognizing me. I'd always avert my eyes away from faces turned towards me, sure that every look was from someone remembering who I am... but no one ever does. Why would they? The average citizen has already forgotten all about the confusion and suspicion surrounding the end of the 58th Hunger Games.

"As far as anyone is concerned, it never happened!" Olivine had said one day. "No one talks about it, like there was never a fifty-eighth game at all! And the Capitol encourages it...I can't remember the last time I saw replay footage from that Games..."

I walk into the Training Center. I'd only been in here a few times since I started living with Olivine, but it hasn't changed. The great, wide entrance hall, sparking with white pillars and glass. Various citizens and Capitol employees mill around, some hurry to and fro...climb stairs, slip into elevators, converse, shout, laugh...

I head to the reception desk and tap my badge on the sensor. The skinny receptionist dressed all lavender slides his fingers across the screen on his desk and nods.

"You're all checked in, sir... You've been assigned to Remake room 23, and you can meet with your prep-team there before your tribute arrives. And since you're a first-year stylist, you've been scheduled a meeting with Mr. Nighswander, Head Stylist, for seven-thirty in his office. It's an informal meeting, of course, just to get to know you...I can let him know you've arrived and you can go right up, if you'd like, sir."

"Thank you," I say. I turn around. A wide entryway across the hall opened into the Remake center - I'd have to find room 23, and meet with my prep-team later...But this isn't a problem. I've already been introduced to the trio... Olivine had made sure of that. She'd organized a lot of the little things. Even my stylist partner, according to Olivine, had studied under her for a few years at one point, could be trusted...

I cross the hall towards the elevators. _Mr. Nighswander_...why does that sound familiar?

I take a few calming breaths to ease the nervous knot in my stomach. _It's fine. Everything is fine, _I tell myself.

A man dressed from the Districts accompanied by an stout Capitol woman walk up next to me to wait for the next batch of elevators. The man must be a mentor, heading to his floor after dropping off his tributes at the Remake Center... I turn my head just a little to see his face, curious...and suddenly - I think I lose my stomach, my heart...stops. The man, who's my age, has the close-shaven blond hair, the almost-transparent gray eyes from my old nightmares, my relapses...the arena.

It's Siris.

Standing not five feet away from me, looking up at the blinking lights of the elevators as though bored. He's changed, but still recognizable. His face is more sallow, eyes lined and tired, muscle turned to fat...

His head turns towards me and I look back at him briefly and give a polite nod..and with electricity pumping through me I look away again, and I'm sure...I'm convinced he's going to recognize me...he's going to know who I am... But there's no sign of recognition in his eyes, and he steps forward with the stout woman in tow into the elevator that opens to his left without a backwards glance at me.

I take some more calming breaths. _It's fine. Everything is fine. If he did not recognize you, no one is going to_.

Just as long as I didn't run into any more old faces.

I nab an elevator with a few other people that smile and engage me in their discussion about which district they think will have the best opening ceremony costumes. I smile in return and reply with animation, as the average Capitol citizen would, and, by the time I make it to my stop, I've calmed down considerably.

_Siris didn't recognize you. Everything will be fine._

I step off the elevator and follow a few signs and the silently pointed directions of a red-headed avox down the hall to a dark wood door with the name embossed onto a metal plaque. I reach up to knock, but then the plaque catches my eye. More importantly, the words on it, in curly letters, _Dowlas Nighswander, Head Stylist._

_Dowlas, of course. I should have guessed._

I take a deep breath and knock.

He looks the same, older, of course, hair longer, but the same. He gestures for me to sit in the chair across from his desk, stands to shake my hand, smiles genuinely.

He doesn't recognize me.

"So you're Olivine's prized student everyone's been raving about," he says.

Does he know? Olivine didn't tell me if he is trustworthy...which usually means he wouldn't be... But Olivine _is_ a known certified stylizing instructor, even runs classes for civilians out of her shop...the other part of her job, a well kept secret. _It's fine, _I tell myself._ It's an innocent question._

So I nod. "I suppose that's me," I say.

"And where did you crop up from?"

_"Lying,"_ Olivine had said once, _"Gets easier as you start to live the lie, and eventually, those lies will become truth."_

"Well, I'm from the eastern quarter. Been there all my life. Olivine is my great-aunt, you see, and I've been living with her for the past several years during my certification."

It's a well rehearsed story. Practiced over and over with Olivine so there would be no room for mistakes.

Dowlas nods, smiling. "So it runs in the family. I've seen your designs. Very nice, contemporary, yet, astonishingly unique."

"Thank you, sir."

"I look forward to seeing your work this year. You remind me a lot of myself when I first started. I think you can go...very far in this industry. I think you've got that natural _knack_..."

I look down at my hands...hands that, once, a lifetime ago, were stained burgundy from dye vats. _I learned from the best, _I want to tell him. But instead, I look up and say, "Thank you, sir."

Dowlas looks at me thoughtfully over steepled fingers, with those same, gold eyes I remember, "I trust you know what you're in for," he says after a pause.

"I've been informed. But unfortunately, in the process of preparing for my trip here, I did not get to see it for myself," I reply levelly. Another rehearsed story.

"Well, for just a first-year stylist - you've got yourself a spitfire. A real revolutionary. You just don't get that type in Twelve anymore." There's that kind of excited fire, the same kind that I remember seeing in his eyes, when he'd told me, once, that the audience was the most powerful weapon in the Hunger Games.

I nod in agreement.

Dowlas leans back in his chair, his hand waves in the air dramatically, he's enjoying this. He really hasn't changed at all. "The girl...who threw herself into the most exciting and dangerous game known to man to spare her sister's life!" He laughs, but it's not a humorous laugh - I'm not actually sure what kind of emotion is behind it at all...

"Everyone is talking...already putting in their bets, if you believe it," he continues, slowly siting back up in his chair and looking at me sincerely, "But I tell you, I'm putting my money on this one. And I wish you all the best of luck with her, too... Make her shine."

A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.

"Thank you. I'll do my best," is all I say.

~.~

My prep-team tumbles into the room like a trio of overexcited children. "She's all ready for you!" They announce.

"Thank you," I say, folding up a couple sketches I had lain out and standing. "I'll take it from here, you're all free to go."

They disperse, and I walk down the short, narrow side hall and open the door - the one marked with a '23'.

She was in there, waiting for me, nervous eyes darting to me as I shut the door behind me, arms crossed self-consciously over her thin frame.

Those dark gray eyes are judging, but whatever she thinks of me, she's good at hiding it.

I cross the floor, and offer her my hand, though unsure if she'd choose take it.

"Hello Katniss," I say. "I'm Cinna, your stylist."

~.~

End

~.~

**A/N: **Alllllright!  
Well, this is where the story ends (or is it?!) Ha.  
It's been fun, thanks for everything, and of course, when leaving a review for this final chapter (which I sincerely hope you do, it's a nice "thank you" to me for having slaved over this thing...and you MUST have liked it just a little if you read all the 37,000 something words ^_^ ), keep the spoilers to a minimum!  
As always,

TTE


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